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STUDIES   IN    SEVEN  ARTS 


STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 


BY 


AETHUH    SYMONS 


THTED  IMPRESSION 


NEW    YOEK 

E.    P.    DUTTON    AND    CO. 

1913 


TO    RHODA 

Do  you  remember  the  first  two  sentences  of 
Pater's  essay  on  '  The  School  of  Giorgione '  ?  I 
will  copy  them,  for  they  make  a  kind  of  motto 
for  my  book,  and  sum  up,  I  think,  the  way  in 
which  you  and  I  (you  always,  and  I  since  I  have 
known  you)  have  looked  upon  art  and  the  arts. 
'  It  is  the  mistake,'  says  Pater,  '  of  much  popular 
criticism  to  regard  poetry,  music  and  j)ainting — 
all  the  various  products  of  art — as  but  transla- 
tions into  different  languages  of  one  and  the  same 
fixed  quantity  of  imaginative  thought,  supple- 
mented by  certain  technical  qualities  of  colour  in 
painting,  of  sound  in  music,  of  rhythmical  words 
in  poetry.  In  this  way,  the  sensuous  element  in 
art,  and  with  it  almost  everything  in  art  that  is 
essentially  artistic,  is  made  a  matter  of  indiffer- 
ence; and  a  clear  apprehension  of  the  opposite 
principle — that  the  sensuous  material  of  each  art 
brings  with  it  a  special  phase  or  quality  of  beauty, 
untranslatable  into  the  forms  of  any  other,  an 
order  of  impressions  distinct  in  kind — is  the 
beginning  of  all  true  sesthetic  criticism.' 

With  the  art  of  poetry,  or  of  literature  in  general, 
I  am  not  here  concerned :  that  is  my  main  con- 
cern in  most  of  my  other  books  of  criticism.  In 
this  book  I  have  tried  to  deal  with  the  other  arts, 
as  I  know  or  recognise  them ;  and  I  find  seven : 


VI 

painting,  sculpture,  architecture,  music,  handi- 
craft, the  stage  (in  which  I  include  drama,  acting, 
pantomime,  scenery,  costume,  and  lighting),  and, 
separate  from  these,  dancing.  Each  of  these 
arts  I  have  tried  to  study  from  its  own  point  of 
view,  and  (except  in  the  case  of  architecture, 
which  has  almost  ceased  to  exist  as  an  art)  in  its 
contemporary  aspects,  and  in  those  contemporary 
aspects  which  seem  to  me  most  important  or 
most  characteristic.  In  my  endeavour  to  study 
each  art  from  its  own  point  of  view,  it  is  to  you 
that  I  owe  most  in  keeping  me  from  slipping, 
more  than  I  have,  into  tempting  and  easy  con- 
fusions. You  have  a  far  clearer  sense  than  I  have 
of  the  special  qualities,  the  special  limits,  of  the 
various  arts ;  and  it  is  from  you  that  I  have  learnt 
to  look  on  each  art  as  of  absolutely  equal  value. 
In  my  endeavour  to  master  what  I  have  called 
the  universal  science  of  beauty,  I  owe  more  to  you 
than  to  technical  books  or  to  technical  people; 
because  in  you  there  is  some  hardly  conscious 
instinct  which  turns  towards  beauty  unerringly, 
like  the  magnet,  at  the  attraction  of  every  vital 
current.  You  will  find,  then,  in  this  book,  much 
of  your  own  coming  back  to  you;  and,  in  this 
dedication,  hardly  more  than  the  acknowledg- 
ment of  a  little  of  my  debt.  But  I  want  the  book 
to  be  yours,  chiefly  because  we  have  lived  so  much 

of  it  together. 

ARTHUR  SYMONS. 

WiTTERSHAM, 

September  26,  1906. 


CONTENTS 


RODIN      ...... 

THE    PAINTING    OF    THE    NINETEENTH    CENTURY 

GUSTAVE   MOREAU 

WATTS     .  .  . 

WHISTLER  .  .  .  . 

CATHEDRALS         .... 

THE  DECAY   OF  CRAFTSMANSHIP   IN    ENGLAND 
BEETHOVEN  .... 

THE   IDEAS   OF  RICHARD   WAGNER 

THE  PROBLEM   OF  RICHARD   STRAUSS      . 

ELEONORA   DUSE 

A   NEW  ART   OF  THE   STAGE 

A   SYMBOLIST   FARCE 

PANTOMIME   AND   THE   POETIC   DRAMA    . 

THE  WORLD  AS  BALLET 


PAGE 

3 
33 
71 

89 
121 
151 
175 
191 
225 
301 
331 
349 
371 
381 
387 


RODIN 


A 


RODIN 


The  art  of  Rodin  competes  with  nature 
rather  than  with  the  art  of  other  sculptors. 
Other  sculptors  turn  life  into  sculpture,  he 
turns  sculpture  into  life.  His  clay  is  part 
of  the  substance  of  the  earth,  and  the  earth 
still  clings  about  it  as  it  comes  up  and  lives. 
It  is  at  once  the  flower  and  the  root ;  that 
of  others  is  the  flower  only,  and  the  plucked 
flower.  That  link  with  the  earth,  which  we 
find  in  the  unhewn  masses  of  rock  from 
which  his  finest  creations  of  pure  form  can 
never  quite  free  themselves,  is  the  secret  of 
his  deepest  force.  It  links  his  creations  to 
nature's,  in  a  single  fashion  of  growth. 

Rodin  is  a  visionary,  to  whom  art  has  no 
meaning  apart  from  truth.  His  first  care  is 
to  assure  you,  as  you  penetrate  into  that 
bewildering  world  which  lies  about  him  in 
his  studios,  that  every  movement  arrested 


4  STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

in  those  figures,  all  in  violent  action,  is 
taken  straight  from  nature.  It  is  not  copied, 
as  you  or  I  would  see  it ;  it  is  re-created,  as 
he  sees  it.  How  then  does  he  see  nature  ? 
To  Rodin  everything  that  lives  is  beautiful, 
merely  because  it  lives,  and  everything  is 
equally  beautiful. 

E-odin  believes,  not  as  a  mystic,  but  as  a 
mathematician,  I  might  almost  say,  in  that 
doctrine  of  '  correspondences  '  which  lies  at 
the  root  of  most  of  the  mystical  teaching. 
He  spies  upon  every  gesture,  knowing  that 
if  he  can  seize  one  gesture  at  the  turn  of 
the  wave,  he  has  seized  an  essential  rhythm 
of  nature.  When  a  woman  combs  her  hair, 
he  will  say  to  you,  she  thinks  she  is  only 
combing  her  hair :  no,  she  is  making  a 
gesture  which  flows  into  the  eternal  rhythm, 
which  is  beautiful  because  it  lives,  because 
it  is  part  of  that  geometrical  plan  which 
nature  is  always  weaving  for  us.  Change 
the  gesture  as  it  is,  give  it  your  own  con- 
ception of  abstract  beauty,  depart  ever  so 
little  from  the  mere  truth  of  the  movement, 
and  the  rhythm  is  broken,  what  was  living 
is  dead. 

We  speak  of  the  rhythm  of  nature.    What 


RODIN  6 

is  it,  precisely,  that  we  mean  ?  Rhythm, 
precisely,  is  a  balance,  a  means  of  preserving 
equilibrium  in  moving  bodies.  The  human 
body  possesses  so  much  volume,  it  has  to 
maintain  its  equilibrium  ;  if  you  displace  its 
contents  here,  they  shift  there  :  the  balance 
is  regained  by  an  instinctive  movement  of 
self-preservation.  Thus  what  we  call  har- 
mony is  really  utility,  and,  as  always,  beauty 
is  seen  to  be  a  necessary  thing,  the  exquisite  \ 
growth  of  a  need. 

And  this  rhythm  runs  through  all  nature, 
producing  every  grace  and  justifying  every 
apparent  defect.  The  same  swing  and 
balance  of  forces  make  the  hump  on  a  dwarf's 
back  and  the  mountain  in  the  lap  of  a  plain. 
One  is  not  more  beautiful  than  the  other, 
if  you  will  take  each  thing  simply,  in  its 
own  place.  And  that  apparent  ugliness  of 
the  average,  even,  has  its  place,  does  not 
require  the  heightening  energy  of  excess 
to  make  it  beautiful.  It,  too,  has  the  beauty 
of  life. 

There  was  a  time,  Rodin  will  tell  you, 
when  he  sought  for  beautiful  models ;  when 
he  found  himself  disappointed,  dissatisfied, 
before  some  body  whose  proportions  did  not 


6  STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

please  him.  He  would  go  on  working 
merely  because  the  model  was  there ;  and, 
after  two  hours'  work,  discover  suddenly  the 
beauty  of  this  living  thing  which  was  turning 
into  a  new  kind  of  life  under  his  fingers. 
Why  choose  any  longer  1  why  reject  this 
always  faultless  material  ?  He  has  come  to 
trust  nature  so  implicitly  that  he  will  never 
pose  a  model,  leaving  nature  to  find  its  own 
way  of  doing  what  he  wants  of  it.  All  de- 
pends on  the  way  of  seeing,  on  the  seizure 
of  the  perfect  moment,  on  the  art  of  render- 
ing, in  the  sculptor's  relief,  'the  instant 
made  eternity.' 

Rodin  was  studying  drawing,  with  no  idea 
but  of  being  a  draughtsman,  when  the  idea 
of  modelling  in  clay  came  to  him.  He  had 
been  drawing  the  model  from  different  points 
of  view,  as  the  pivot  turned,  presenting  now 
this  and  now  that  profile.  It  occurred  to 
him  to  apply  this  principle  to  the  clay,  in 
which,  by  a  swift,  almost  simultaneous, 
series  of  studies  after  nature,  a  single  figure 
might  be  built  up  which  would  seem  to  be 
wholly  alive,  to  move  throughout  its  entire 
surface.  From  that  time  until  now,  he  has 
taken  one  profile  after  another,  each  separ- 


RODIN  7 

ately,  and  all  together,  turning  his  work  In  all 
directions,  looking  upward  at  the  model  to 
get  the  arch  and  hollow  of  the  eyebrows,  for 
instance,  looking  down  on  the  model,  taking 
each  angle,  as  if,  for  the  time,  no  other 
existed,  and  pursuing  the  outlines  of  nature 
with  a  movement  as  constant  as  her  own. 
At  the  end,  the  thing  is  done,  there  is  no 
need  of  even  a  final  point  of  view,  of  an  ad- 
justment to  some  image  of  proportion :  nature 
has  been  caught  on  the  wing,  enfolded  by 
observation  as  the  air  enfolds  the  living 
form.  If  every  part  is  right,  the  whole  must 
be  right.  ^ 

But,  for  the  living  representation  of 
nature  in  movement,  something  more  is 
needed  than  the   exact    copy.      This   is   a 

1  This  method  of  work  is  very  clearly  defined  by  M.  CamiUe 
Mauclair,  almost  in  Rodin's  own  words,  in  an  article  on  '  La 
Technique  de  Rodin '  :  '  II  eut  I'idee  de  ne  point  travailler  k 
ses  figures  d'un  seul  cote  a  la  fois,  mais  de  tons  ensemble, 
tournant  autour  constamment  et  faisant  des  dessins  sxiccessifs 
a  meme  le  bloc,  d&  tons  les  plans,  modelant  par  un  dessin 
simultane  de  toutes  les  silhouettes  et  les  unissant  sommaire- 
ment  de  fagon  a  obtenir  avant  tout  un  dessin  de  mouvement 
dans  I'air,  sans  s'occuper  de  I'harmonisation  pr^congue  de  son 
sujet.  C'etait  obeir  aux  principes  naturels  de  la  statuaire  faite 
pour  etre  vue  en  plein  air,  c'est-a-dire  la  recherche  du  contour 
et  de  ce  que  les  peintres  appellent  la  valeur.'  ('  Rodin  et  son 
CEuvre.'     Edition  de  '  La  Plume.'     1900.) 


8  STUDIES  IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

certain  deliberate  exaggeration;  not  a  cor- 
rection, not  a  deviation,  but  a  means  of 
interpretation,  the  only  means  by  which  the 
softness  and  the  energy  of  nature  can  be 
rendered  in  clay.  It  is  a  manner  of  express- 
ing in  clay  what  nature  expresses  with  the 
infinite  resources  of  its  moving  blood.  *  All 
art,'  said  Merimee,  'is  exaggeration  apropos.' 
It  is  on  the  perfection  of  this  a  propos  that 
everything  depends,  and  here  Eodin's  train- 
ing as  a  draughtsman  gives  him  his  safety 
in  freedom.  He,  who  never  measures  his 
proportions,  can  rely  implicitly  on  the 
exactitude  of  his  eye,  in  preserving  the  pro- 
portion of  every  exaggeration. 

When  '  I'Age  d'Airain,'  the  bronze  which 
is  now  in  the  Luxembourg,  was  sent  to  the 
Salon  of  1877,  Kodin  was  accused  by  the 
hanging  committee  of  having  moulded  it  on 
a  living  model.  He  protested,  there  was  an 
official  inquiry,  and  the  commissioners  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  at  least  some  parts  of 
the  body  had  been  thus  moulded.  It  was  not 
until  three  years  later  that  the  charge  was 
finally  disproved  and  officially  withdrawn ; 
the  statue  was  again  exhibited  at  the  Salon, 
a  medal  of  the  third  class  awarded  to  it,  and 


RODIN  9 

it  was  afterwards  bought  by  the  State.  The 
story  is  instructive,  and  might  be  remem- 
bered by  those  who  have  since  brought 
against  Rodin  so  very  different  an  accusa- 
tion. Turn  from  this  statue  to  the  mar- 
vellous little  bronze  of  '  la  Vieille  Heaul- 
miere '  :  there,  in  that  re-incarnation  of 
Villon's  ballade,  you  will  see  the  same  pre- 
cision of  anatomical  design,  with  an  even 
deeper  sense  of  the  beauty  of  what  age  and 
the  horror  of  decay  cannot  take  out  of  the 
living  body.  Rodin  has  never  taken  a  step 
without  knowing  exactly  where  he  is  going 
to  set  his  foot,  and  he  has  never  turned 
back  from  a  step  once  taken.  It  was  not 
until  he  could  copy  nature  so  exactly  as  to 
deceive  the  eyes  of  those  who  imagined  that 
they  knew  nature  when  they  saw  it,  it  was 
not  until  he  had  the  body  by  heart,  that  he 
began  to  make  the  body  think.  He  had 
given  it  form ;  the  form  must  be  awakened. 
The  touch  of  life  and  of  thought  comes,  then, 
from  an  exaggeration  here,  an  exaggeration 
there ;  a  touch,  inexplicable  and  certain, 
which  is  at  once  his  method  and  his  secret. 

It  is  on  these  two  methods  that  Bodin 
relies  for  the  rendering  of  his  vision  of  hfe. 


10         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

The  art  of  the  sculptor  gives  him  but  one 
means  of  expression ;  all  is  in  relief,  all 
depends  on  the  power,  balance,  and  beauty 
of  the  relief  Watching  the  living  move- 
ment from  every  angle,  turning  about  it  as 
a  wild  beast  turns  about  its  prey,  spying  for 
the  moment  to  pounce,  seize,  and  possess, 
he  must  translate  form,  movement,  light 
and  shadow,  softness,  force,  everything 
which  exists  in  nature,  by  the  cunning 
adjustment  of  his  relief  *  Le  style,  c'est 
I'homme,'  we  say ;  '  le  modele,  c'est  Fart,' 
Rodin  would  say. 

Rodin  has  sometimes  been  compared  with 
Michelangelo,  but  it  would  be  more  accu- 
rate to  trace  the  principles  of  his  art  back 
to  the  Greeks.  The  Greeks  worked  directly 
from  nature,  with  a  fresh  observation,  the 
eyesight  of  the  youth  of  the  world,  and  its 
unspoilt  mastery  of  hand.  In  Donatello  we 
find  the  same  directness,  less  powerful,  but 
not  less  sincere.  Michelangelo  approached 
nature  through  Donatello,  so  to  speak,  and 
then  departed  from  nature,  with  his  immense 
confidence,  his  readiness  to  compete  with 
nature  itself  on  a  scale  more  decoratively 
impressive  than  nature's.     His  exaggeration 


RODIN  11 

is  not  the  exaggeration  of  the  Greeks,  nor 
is  it  Rodin's,  an  attempt  at  always  greater 
fideUty,  at  an  essentially  more  precise  exacti- 
tude ;  it  deviates,  for  his  own  purposes,  along 
ways  of  his  own.  He  speaks  truth,  but  not 
without  rhetoric. 

To  obtain  grace,  Kodin  will  say  to  you, 
you  must  begin  with  strength  ;  otherwise 
the  work  will  become  hard  and  dry. 
'  Quelque  chose  de  puissant,'  he  will  repeat, 
with  half-closed  eyes,  the  hands  clutching 
upon  the  imagined  clay.  If  you  remind 
him  of  Baudelaire's  saying  :  '  L'energie,  c'est 
la  grace  supreme,'  he  will  accept  the  words 
as  the  best  definition  of  his  own  meaning. 

The  later  manner  of  all  great  artists,  in 
every  division  of  art,  obeys  the  same  law  of 
growth.  Aiming  always  at  the  utmost  pre- 
cision of  rendering  his  subject-matter,  the 
artist  comes  gradually  to  take  a  different 
view  of  what  precision  really  is.  He  begins 
by  seeking  a  form  which  can  express  every- 
thing without  leaving  anything  over;  he 
desires  to  draw  his  circle  round  some 
separate  fragment  of  nature,  and  to  exhibit 
the  captured,  complete  thing.  Only,  nature 
rebels.     Something  remains  over,  stays  out- 


12         STUDIES  IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

side  the  circle.  The  breath  has  gone  out  of 
the  body,  the  mystery  has  gone  out  of  the 
soul.  He  has  cut  off  his  fragment,  if  you 
will,  but  he  has  cut  it  off  from  life.  At  this 
point  the  public  accepts  his  work  ;  he  seems 
to  have  attained.  At  this  point  he  realises 
how  far  he  is  from  attainment,  and  he  sets 
himself  to  the  eternal  search.  He  breaks 
down  the  straight  limits  of  his  form,  he 
seeks  to  find  new  links  by  which  to  attach 
this  creature  of  his  hands  to  the  universal 
life  of  things.  He  says  frankly  to  the 
spectator  of  his  toil :  you  must  come  and 
help  me,  or  I  can  never  tell  you  all  that  I 
have  to  say.  He  gives  a  twofold  burden  to 
the  lines  of  his  work  :  that  which  they 
express,  and  that  which  they  suggest.  The 
lines  begin  to  whisper  something  to  the 
soul,  in  a  remote  voice,  and  you  must 
listen  in  order  to  hear  it.  The  eyes  have 
something  more  to  do  than  to  see.  The 
mind  must  collaborate  with  the  eyes,  and 
both  must  be  content  to  share  with  life  itself 
the  dissatisfaction  of  an  inexplicable  mystery 
left  over  at  the  end. 

Rodin's  earlier  form  seemed  able  to  say 
everything  which  he  had  to  say ;  the  model- 


RODIN  13 

ling  was  infinitely  detailed,  the  work  lived 
with  a  vivid  life  of  its  own ;  and  what 
remained  over  ?  Something  remained  over, 
the  breath  was  not  yet  wholly  lodged  and 
at  home  in  the  body,  the  soul  was  not  yet 
wholly  conscious  of  its  power  of  flight.  He 
began  to  feel  towards  another  form,  appar- 
ently vaguer,  essentially  closer  to  the  idea. 
He  learnt  how  to  indicate  by  a  continually 
greater  economy  of  means,  by  omission,  by 
the  simplification  or  synthesis  of  a  great 
complexity  of  efforts  ;  he  found  out  short 
cuts,  which  would  take  him  more  swiftly  to 
his  end  ;  he  built  up  his  new  form  as  much 
with  the  brain  as  with  the  hand.  The 
Balzac  is  a  divination  ;  everything  is  there, 
and  it  is  there  as  it  must  be  if  it  is  to  be 
shown  by  sculpture :  all  depends  on  the 
sheer  science  of  the  relief,  on  the  geometry 
of  the  observed  profiles ;  but  the  life,  the 
mystery,  the  thing  divined,  must  be  divined 
over  again  by  every  one  who  looks  at  it. 
The  work  is  no  longer  a  block  cut  sharply 
off  from  nature ;  it  is  part  of  ourselves,  to 
be  understood  only  as  we  understand  one 
another. 


14         STUDIES  IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

II 

In  one  of  Rodin's  finest  creations,  a  great 
hand,  large,  strong,  and  smooth,  holds  in  a 
paternal  grasp  a  lump  of  earth,  out  of  which 
emerge  two  ephemerides,  fragile,  pathetic 
creatures,  with  the  delicate,  insubstantial 
grace  of  passing  things,  who  cling  to  each 
other  joyously,  accepting  life  on  its  terms  of 
brief  delight.  It  is  God  bidding  the  earth 
increase  and  multiply  ;  it  symbolises  human 
life,  in  all  its  dependence  on  that  unknown 
force  in  the  hollow  of  whose  hand  it  lives 
and  moves.  Elsewhere  he  has  indicated  the 
vain  struggles,  the  insane  desires,  the  in- 
satiable longings,  the  murderous  divisions, 
of  the  ephemerides,  man  and  woman;  here 
he  indicates  their  not  less  pathetic  content, 
the  butterfly  accepting  its  hour. 

All  Kodin's  work  is  founded  on  a  con- 
ception of  force  ;  first,  the  force  of  the  earth, 
then  the  two  conflicting  forces,  man  and 
woman  ;  with,  always,  behind  and  beyond, 
the  secret,  unseizable,  inexplicable  force  of 
that  mystery  which  surrounds  the  vital 
energy  of  the  earth  itself,  as  it  surrounds  us 
in  our  existence  on  the  earth.     Out  of  these 


RODIN  16 

forces  he  has  chosen  for  the  most  part 
the  universal,  vivifying  force  of  sex.  In 
man  he  represents  the  obvious  energy  of 
nature,  thews  and  muscles,  bones,  strength 
of  limb ;  in  woman,  the  exquisite  strength 
of  weakness,  the  subtler  energy  of  the  senses. 
They  fight  the  eternal  battle  of  sex,  their 
embraces  are  a  grapple  of  enemies,  they  seek 
each  other  that  they  may  overcome  each 
other.  And  the  woman,  softly,  overcomes, 
to  her  own  perdition.  The  man  holds  her 
in  the  hollow  of  his  hand,  as  God  holds  both 
man  and  woman ;  he  could  close  his  hand 
upon  the  fragile  thing  that  nestles  there, 
and  crush  it ;  but  something  paralyses  his 
muscles  in  a  tender  inaction.  The  hand  will 
never  close  over  her,  she  will  always  have 
the  slave's  conquest. 

Every  figure  that  Rodin  has  created  is  in 
the  act  of  striving  towards  something :  a 
passion,  an  idea,  a  state  of  being,  quiescence 
itself  His  '  Gates  of  Hell '  are  a  headlong 
flight  and  falling,  in  which  all  the  agonies 
of  a  place  of  torment,  which  is  Baudelaire's 
rather  than  Dante's,  swarm  in  actual  move- 
ment. '  Femmes  damnees '  lean  upward  and 
downward  out  of  hollow  caves  and  moun- 


16         STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

tainous  crags,  they  cling  to  the  edge  of  the 
world,  off  which  their  feet  slip,  they  embrace 
blindly  over  a  precipice,  they  roll  together 
into  bottomless  pits  of  descent.  Arms  wave 
in  appeal,  and  clasp  shuddering  bodies  in  an 
extremity  of  despair.  And  all  this  sorrowful 
and  tortured  flesh  is  consumed  with  desire, 
with  the  hurrying  fever  of  those  who  have 
only  a  short  time  in  which  to  enjoy  the 
fruits  of  desire.  Their  mouths  open  towards 
one  another  in  an  endless  longing,  all  their 
muscles  strain  violently  towards  the  em- 
brace. They  live  only  with  a  life  of  desire, 
and  that  obsession  has  carried  them  beyond 
the  wholesome  bounds  of  nature,  into  the 
violence  of  a  perversity  which  is  at  times 
almost  insane. 

But  always,  in  the  clay  itself,  there  is 
ecstasy.  Often  it  is  a  perverse  ecstasy  ;  at 
times,  as  in  the  Iris,  as  in  the  Muse  who 
swoops  like  an  eagle,  as  in  the  radiant  figure 
with  the  sun  in  his  hair  who  flings  open  the 
gates  of  the  mountains  in  the  monument  to 
General  Sarmiento,  it  is  pure  joy  ;  often,  as 
in  the  Balzac,  the  Hugo,  the  Puvis  de 
Chavannes,  it  is  the  ecstasy  of  creative 
thought.     But  always  there  is  ecstasy. 


RODIN  17 

In  Rodin's  sculpture,  clay  or  marble,  that 
something  powerful  of  which  he  speaks  has 
ended  in  a  palpitating  grace,  as  of  living 
flesh.  He  feels,  he  translates,  sensation  for 
sensation,  the  voluptuous  soft  cool  warmth 
of  the  flesh,  the  daintiness  of  the  skeleton, 
indicated  under  its  smooth  covering ;  all 
that  is  exquisite  in  the  structure  of  bone  and 
muscle,  in  the  force  of  man  and  the  supple- 
ness of  woman.  The  flesh  seems  to  shiver, 
curdle,  tightening  upon  the  bone  as  if  at 
a  touch ;  it  lies  abandoned,  in  a  tender 
repose ;  it  grapples,  flesh  upon  flesh,  in  all 
the  agonies  of  all  the  embraces.  His  hand 
seems  to  press  most  caressingly  about  the 
shoulder-blades  and  the  hollows  of  the  loins. 
The  delicate  ridge  and  furrow  of  the  back- 
bone draw  his  hand  to  mould  them  into  new 
shapes  and  motions  of  beauty.  His  hand 
follows  the  loins  where  they  swell  into  ampler 
outlines  :  the  back,  from  neck  to  croup,  lies 
quivering,  in  all  the  beauty  of  life  itself 

In  the  drawings,  which  constitute  in 
themselves  so  interesting  a  development  of 
his  art,  there  is  little  of  the  delicacy  of 
beauty.  They  are  notes  for  the  clay, 
*  instantanes,'   and    they    note    only   move- 


18         STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

ment,  expression.  They  are  done  in  two 
minutes,  by  a  mere  gallop  of  the  hand  over 
paper,  with  the  eyes  fixed  on  some  uncon- 
scious pose  of  the  model.  And  here,  it 
would  seem  (if  indeed  accident  did  not  enter 
so  largely  into  the  matter)  that  a  point  in 
sentiment  has  been  reached  in  which  the 
perverse  idealism  of  Baudelaire  has  dis- 
appeared, and  a  simpler  kind  of  cynicism 
takes  its  place.  In  these  astonishing  draw- 
ings from  the  nude  we  see  woman  carried  to 
a  further  point  of  simplicity  than  even  in 
Degas :  woman  the  animal ;  woman,  in  a 
strange  sense,  the  idol.  Not  even  the 
Japanese  have  simplified  drawing  to  this 
illuminating  scrawl  of  four  lines,  enclosing 
the  whole  mystery  of  the  flesh.  Each  draw- 
ing indicates,  as  if  in  the  rough  block  of  stone, 
a  single  violent  movement.  Here  a  woman 
faces  you,  her  legs  thrown  above  her  head ; 
here  she  faces  you  with  her  legs  thrust  out 
before  her,  the  soles  of  her  feet  seen  close 
and  gigantic.  She  squats  like  a  toad,  she 
stretches  herself  like  a  cat,  she  stands  rigid, 
she  lies  abandoned.  Every  movement  of 
her  body,  violently  agitated  by  the  remem- 
brance, or  the  expectation,   or   the   act   of 


RODIN  19 

desire,  is  seen  at  an  expressive  moment. 
She  turns  upon  herself  in  a  hundred  atti- 
tudes, turning  always  upon  the  central  pivot 
of  the  sex,  which  emphasises  itself  with  a 
fantastic  and  frightful  monotony.  The  face 
is  but  just  indicated,  a  face  of  wood,  like  a 
savage  idol ;  and  the  body  has  rarely  any  of 
that  elegance,  seductiveness,  and  shivering 
delicacy  of  life  which  we  find  in  the  marble. 
It  is  a  machine  in  movement,  a  monstrous, 
devastating  machine,  working  mechanically, 
and  possessed  by  the  one  rage  of  the  animal. 
Often  two  bodies  interlace  each  other,  flesh 
crushing  upon  flesh  in  all  the  exasperation 
of  a  futile  possession  ;  and  the  energy  of  the 
embrace  is  indicated  in  the  great  hand  that 
lies  like  a  weight  upon  the  shoulders.  It  is 
hideous,  overpowering,  and  it  has  the  beauty 
of  all  supreme  energy. 

And  these  drawings,  with  their  violent 
simplicity  of  appeal,  have  the  distinction  of 
all  abstract  thought  or  form.  Even  in 
Degas  there  is  a  certain  luxury,  a  possible 
low  appeal,  in  those  heavy  and  creased 
bodies  bending  in  tubs  and  streaming  a 
sponge  over  huddled  shoulders.  But  here 
luxury  becomes  geometrical ;  its  axioms  are 


20         STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

demonstrated  algebraically.  It  is  the  un- 
known X  which  sprawls,  in  this  spawning 
entanglement  of  animal  life,  over  the  damped 
paper,  between  these  pencil  outlines,  each 
done  at  a  stroke,  like  a  hard,  sure  stroke  of 
the  chisel. 

For,  it  must  be  remembered,  these  are  the 
drawings  of  a  sculptor,  notes  for  sculpture, 
and  thus  indicating  form  as  the  sculptor 
sees  it,  with  more  brevity,  in  simpler  outline, 
than  the  painter.  They  speak  another  lan- 
guage than  the  drawings  of  the  painter, 
searching,  as  they  do,  for  the  points  that 
catch  the  light  along  a  line,  for  the  curves 
that  indicate  contour  tangibly.  In  looking 
at  the  drawings  of  a  painter,  one  sees  colour ; 
here,  in  these  shorthand  notes  of  a  sculptor, 
one's  fingers  seem  actually  to  touch  marble. 


Ill 


Rodin  will  tell  you  that  in  his  interpreta- 
tion of  life  he  is  often  a  translator  who  does 
not  understand  the  message  which  he  hands 
on.  At  times  it  is  a  pure  idea,  an  abstract 
conception,  which  he  sets  himself  to  express 


RODIN  21 

in  clay ;  something  that  he  has  thought, 
something  that  he  has  read  :  the  creation  of 
woman,  the  legend  of  Psyche,  the  idea  of 
prayer,  of  the  love  of  brother  and  sister,  a 
line  of  Dante  or  of  Baudelaire.  But  more 
often  he  surrenders  himself  to  the  direct 
guidance  of  life  itself:  a  movement  is  made 
before  him,  and  from  this  movement  he 
creates  the  idea  of  the  movement.  Often  a 
single  figure  takes  form  under  his  hands, 
and  he  cannot  understand  what  the  figure 
means  :  its  lines  seem  to  will  something,  and 
to  ask  for  the  completion  of  their  purpose. 
He  puts  it  aside,  and  one  day,  happening  to 
see  it  as  it  lies  among  other  formless  sugges- 
tions of  form,  it  groups  itself  with  another 
fragment,  itself  hitherto  unexplained ;  sud- 
denly there  is  a  composition,  the  idea  has 
penetrated  the  clay,  life  has  given  birth 
to  the  soul.  He  endeavours  to  represent 
life  in  all  its  mystery,  not  to  penetrate  the 
mystery  of  life.  He  gives  you  a  movement, 
an  expression  ;  if  it  has  come  straight  from 
life,  if  it  has  kept  the  living  contours,  it 
must  mean  something,  and  he  is  but  your 
comrade  in  the  search  for  that  meaning. 
Yet  he  is  never  indifferent  to  that  mean- 


22         STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

ing ;  he  is  rarely  content  to  leave  any  single 
figure  wholly  to  the  chance  of  interpretation. 
Kodin  is  a  thinker,  as  well  as  a  seer  ;  he  has 
put  the  whole  of  his  intelligence  into  his 
work,  not  leaving  any  fragment  of  himself 
unused.  And  so  this  world  of  his  making 
becomes  a  world  of  problems,  of  symbols,  in 
which  life  offers  itself  to  be  understood. 
Here  is  a  face,  fixed  in  an  attitude  of  medita- 
tion, and  set  aside  unfinished,  to  which  a 
hand,  lifted  daintily  to  the  temples,  has 
found  its  way  out  of  another  study  ;  and  the 
man's  hand  waits,  giving  the  movement 
which  completes  the  woman's  head,  until  the 
hand  of  the  same  model  has  been  studied  in 
that  position.  Here  two  lovers,  on  the  back 
of  an  eagle,  are  seen  carried  to  the  same 
point  of  heaven  on  the  flight  of  the  same 
desire.  Christ  agonises  in  the  garden  of 
Eden,  or  it  may  be  Prometheus ;  he  is 
conquered,  and  a  useless  angel,  who  cannot 
help,  but  perhaps  comes  as  an  angel  of  glory, 
hovers  down  to  him.  A  shoal  of  rapid  Muses, 
hurrying  to  reach  the  poet,  swim  towards 
him  as  upon  carrying  waves.  A  great  Muse, 
swooping  like  an  eagle,  hurls  inspiration 
into  the  brain  of  the  poet.    Another  figure 


RODIN  23 

of  inspiration,  an  Iris,  meant  for  the  monu- 
ment of  Victor  Hugo,  is  seen  arrested  in  a 
moment  of  violent  action,  which  tears  the 
whole  body  almost  in  two.  With  one  hand 
she  grasps  her  foot,  drawing  the  leg  up  tight 
against  the  body  ;  the  other  leg  is  flung 
out  at  a  sharp  angle,  in  a  sudden,  leaping 
curve.  All  the  force  of  the  muscles  palpitates 
in  this  strenuous  flesh  ;  the  whole  splendour 
of  her  sex,  unveiled,  palpitates  to  the  air ; 
the  messenger  of  the  gods,  bringing  some 
divine  message,  pauses  in  flight,  an  embodied 
inspiration. 

In  a  group  meant  for  some  shadowy  corner 
of  a  park,  among  growing  things,  dear  to 
Pan  and  the  nymphs,  a  satyr  grasps  a 
woman  with  fierce  tenderness,  his  gay 
animal  face,  sharpened  with  desire,  the  eyes 
oblique  like  the  ears,  appearing  over  her 
shoulder ;  his  hoofs  clutch  the  ground ;  one 
hand  catches  her  by  the  hair,  the  other 
seizes  her  above  the  knee,  as  if  to  lift  her  in 
his  arms ;  she  pushes  him  away,  startled, 
resisting  the  brutality  of  instinct,  inevitably 
at  his  mercy.  Here  are  two  figures  :  one, 
a  woman,  rigid  as  an  idol,  stands  in  all  the 
peace   of    indifference ;    the    other,    a   man 


24         STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

tortured  with  desire,  every  muscle  strained 
to  exasperation,  writhes  in  all  the  ineffectual 
energy  of  a  force  which  can  but  feed  upon 
itself.  She  is  there,  before  him,  close  to 
him,  infinitely  apart,  and  he  could  crush  but 
never  seize  her.  In  an  exquisite  and  wholly 
new  rendering  of  the  Temptation  of  St. 
Anthony,  the  saint  lies  prostrate,  crouched 
against  the  cross,  which  his  lips  kiss 
feverishly,  as  he  closes  his  pained  eyes ;  the 
shoulders  seem  to  move  in  a  shuddering 
revolt  from  the  burden  which  they  bear  un- 
willingly ;  he  grovels  in  the  dust  like  a 
toad,  in  his  horror  of  the  life  and  beauty 
which  have  cast  themselves  away  upon  him. 
And  the  woman  lies  back  luxuriously, 
stretching  her  naked  limbs  across  his  back, 
and  twisting  her  delicate  arms  behind  her 
head,  in  a  supple  movement  of  perfectly 
happy  abandonment,  breathing  the  air ;  she 
has  the  innocence  of  the  flesh,  the  ignorance 
of  the  spirit,  and  she  does  not  even  know 
what  it  is  to  tempt.  She  is  without  per- 
versity ;  the  flesh,  not  the  devil ;  and  so, 
perhaps,  the  more  perilous. 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  this  version 
of  a   subject   which   so  many  artists   have 


RODIN  26 

treated,  always  in  a  spirit  of  perversity  or  of 
grotesque  horror,  with  all  those  other  ver- 
sions, from  Hieronymus  van  Bosch,  with  his 
crawling  and  swooping  abortions,  in  whom 
there  could  lie  no  possible  temptation,  to 
Rops,  with  his  woman  of  enticing  flesh 
spread  out  mockingly  upon  the  cross,  from 
which  she  has  cast  ofi"  the  divine  body.  To 
Rodin  it  is  the  opposition  of  the  two  powers 
of  the  world ;  it  is  the  conflict  of  the  two 
rejections,  the  two  absolute  masters  of  the 
human  will.  St.  Anthony  cannot  under- 
stand the  woman,  the  woman  cannot  under- 
stand St.  Anthony.  To  her,  he  seems  to  be 
playing  at  abnegation,  for  the  game's  sake, 
stupidly  ;  to  him,  she  seems  to  be  bringing 
all  hell-fire  in  the  hollow  of  her  cool  hands. 
They  will  never  understand  one  another, 
and  that  will  be  the  reason  of  the  eternal 
conflict. 

Here  is  the  Balzac,  with  its  royal  air, 
shouldering  the  crowd  apart,  as  it  steps  into 
the  final  solitude,  and  the  triumph.  It  is 
the  thinker  of  action,  the  visionary  creator 
of  worlds,  standing  there  like  a  mountain 
that  has  become  man.  The  pose  is  that  of 
a  rock  against  which  all  waves  must  dash 


26         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

themselves  in  vain.  There  is  exultation,  a 
kind  of  ferocity  of  enjoyment  of  life  and  of 
the  making  of  life,  in  the  great  beaked  head, 
the  great  jaws,  the  eagle's  eyes  under  the 
crag  of  eyebrows.  And  the  rock  which 
suggests  the  man,  the  worker  wrapped  in 
the  monastic  habit  of  his  dressing-gown,  all 
supple  force  under  the  loose  folds  of  moulded 
clay,  stands  there  as  if  growing  up  out  of 
the  earth,  planted  for  the  rest  of  time.  It  is 
the  proudest  thing  that  has  been  made  out 
of  clay. 

It  is  Balzac,  but  it  is  more  than  Balzac  ; 
it  is  the  genius  and  the  work  of  Balzac ;  it 
is  the  '  Comedie  Humaine,'  it  is  Seraphita 
and  Vautrin  and  Lucien  and  Valerie  ;  it  is 
the  energy  of  the  artist  and  the  solitude  of 
the  thinker  and  the  abounding  temperament 
of  the  man  ;  and  it  is  the  triumph  of  all  this 
in  one  supreme  incarnation,  which  seems  to 
give  new  possibilities  to  sculpture. 


IV 


All  his  life  Rodin  has  been  a  fighter,  and 
now,    at   the   age    of  sixty-one,    after    the 


RODIN  27 

creation  of  a  series  of  masterpieces,  he  is 
still  fighting.  The  history  of  the  Balzac  is 
too  well  known  to  need  repeating ;  but  that 
miracle  of  official  imbecility,  the  refusal  of 
Rodin's  work  and  the  substitution  of  one  of 
the  compilations  of  Falguiere  (a  true  artist, 
born  to  be  a  painter,  who  paints  to  please 
himself  and  does  sculpture  to  please  the 
public)  has  been  followed,  only  the  other 
day,  by  a  similar  insult.  The  civic  author- 
ities of  Paris  ordered  from  M.  Rodin  a  bust  of 
Victor  Hugo,  to  be  set  up  in  the  Place  Royale. 
M.  Rodin  set  to  work  immediately,  and 
produced  the  bust,  which  is  now  to  be  seen 
in  the  Salon  ;  the  bust  was  photographed, 
the  photographs  sent  to  the  H6tel  de  Ville, 
and  the  same  evening  an  official  letter  was 
received  by  the  sculptor  telling  him  to  con- 
sider the  order  null  and  void,  seeing  that  an 
arrangement  had  been  made  with  another 
sculptor  on  better  terms  ('de  considerer 
comme  nulle  et  non  avenue  la  commande  qui 
m'avait  ete  faite,  attendu  qu'il  avait  traite 
sous  de  meilleures  conditions  avec  un  autre 
sculpteur ').  I  take  these  words,  which  have 
their  value  as  a  document  in  the  history  of 
the  relations  of  art  and  the  State,  from  a  note 


28         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

in   the   *  Gaulois/  confirmed  by  M.  Rodin 
himself.^ 

No,  even  now,  Rodin  is  not  accepted,  uni- 
versally accepted,  as  the  one  great  modern 
sculptor,  as  the  Wagner  of  sculpture.  It  is 
true  that  one  only  needs  the  eyes  to  see, 
that  one  only  needs  to  open  one's  eyes,  and 
to  forget  to  bring  with  one  any  ready-made 
ways  of  seeing.  There,  precisely  there,  lies 
all  the  difliculty.  Hardly  any  one  is  able  to 
see  what  is  before  him,  just  as  it  is  in  itself. 
He  comes  expecting  one  thing,  he  finds 
another  thing,  he  sees  through  the  veil  of 
his  preconception,  he  criticises  before  he  has 
apprehended,  he  condemns  without  allowing 
his  instinct  the  chance  of  asserting  itself. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  idea  of  beauty. 
Almost  every  one  can  see  the  beauty  of 
Raphael,  only  a  certain  number  can  see  the 
beauty  of  Velasquez,  not  many  can  see  the 

'  A  further  comment  remains  to  be  added.  I  find  in  '  La 
Plume '  of  the  1st  May  the  following  note  :  '  Le  ConseU,  on  s'en 
souvient,  trouva  trop  elev^  le  prix  de  2500  fr.  propose  par 
I'auteur  du  Balzac,  pour  le  buste  de  Victor  Hugo  destine  au 
Centenaire  (et  qui  repr^sentait  rien  que  la  recuperation  des 
frais).  II  s'adressa  a  un  artiste  qui  faisait  "  a  de  meUleures 
conditions."  L'artiste  a  presents  sa  note,  accept^e  incontinent : 
elle  s'eleve  a  25,000  francs.  .  .  .  Le  promoteur  du  vote  est 
M.  Quentin-Bauchart ;  le  statuaire  s'appelle  M.  Barreau.' 


RODIN  29 

beauty  of  Blake.  In  the  human  figure, 
every  one  can  see  the  beauty  of  a  breast ;  not 
many  can  see  the  beauty  of  a  shoulder-blade. 
In  nature,  every  one  can  see  the  beauty  of 
the  Alps  at  dawn ;  not  many  can  see  the 
beauty  of  a  putrescent  pool.  Yet  all  these 
are  but  different  forms  of  the  same  essential 
beauty ;  all  wait  patiently  for  the  same 
acceptance,  all  offer  themselves  to  the  same 
mere  sight  of  the  eyes. 

But  we  have  been  taught  to  see  before 
our  eyes  have  found  out  a  way  of  seeing  for 
themselves ;  we  have  to  unlearn  whole 
traditions  of  prejudice  :  we  have  to  force 
ourselves  to  look  things  straight  in  the  face. 
The  art  of  sculpture  has  seemed  the  one  art 
which  has  already  reached  finality  ;  here,  at 
all  events,  sighed  the  public  with  relief,  we 
shall  have  nothing  more  to  learn  or  to  un- 
learn :  we  know  at  least  what  a  piece  of 
sculpture  is  when  we  see  it.  From  the  first 
Rodin  has  been  perturbing.  This  warmth 
of  life,  is  it  not  excessive  ?  This  softness, 
suppleness,  spring,  are  they  quite  the 
qualities  proper  to  sculpture?  Here  is  a 
back  which  will  shiver  if  I  touch  it,  but  why 
is  the  face  half  lost  m  the  marble  out  of 


30         STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

which  the  figure  seems  to  grow  ?  Finally, 
is  this  a  man  or  a  mountain  or  an  eagle 
which  calls  itself  Balzac,  and  is  so  different 
from  the  known  portraits  of  Balzac  ?  Some- 
thing new  has  come  even  into  sculpture ; 
there  is  a  troubling  upheaval  of  some  restless 
inner  life  in  the  clay ;  even  sculpture  has 
gone  the  way  of  all  the  other  arts,  and  has 
learnt  to  suggest  more  than  it  says,  to  em- 
body dreams  in  its  flesh,  to  become  at  once  a 
living  thing  and  a  symbol. 

1902. 


THE   PAINTING   OF 
THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 


THE  PAINTING  OF 
THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


Mr.  D.  S.  MacColl's  book  on  '  Nineteenth 
Century  Art '  is  the  most  important  book  on 
painting  which  has  been  pubhshed  since 
Kuskin's  '  Modern  Painters.'  It  is  neither 
a  challenge  nor  a  prophecy,  and  '  Modern 
Painters '  was  both.  It  is  an  interpretation. 
Mr.  MacColl  is  a  painter  who  is  a  writer, 
and  not  a  writer  who  has  studied  painting. 
He  is  in  the  movement  of  the  century,  and 
as  a  painter  he  has  a  small,  definite  place  of 
his  own,  where  a  fastidious  temperament 
can  be  seen  at  work  exquisitely.  The  main 
value  of  the  criticism  in  his  book  is  that  it 
is  a  painter's  criticism,  letting  one  in  by 
secret  doors  into  the  recesses  of  the  painter's 
brain  and  workshop.  But  the  book  is  not 
merely   a  collection  of  scattered  essays  on 

33 

c 


34  STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

artists,  it  is  a  view  of  a  period  of  art ;  an 
attempt,  as  we  are  told  in  the  preface,  '  to 
throw  the  chief  figures  of  the  period  into 
perspective ;  to  define  their  imaginative 
attitude ;  to  indicate  how  some  of  them 
went  with  the  drift  of  art  special  to  the 
century,  and  others  against  it.'  Each  artist 
is  studied  not  only  as  an  artist,  but  as  a 
temperament,  and  his  intentions  are  ex- 
pressed, as  often  as  possible,  by  quotations 
from  his  letters  and  sayings.  This,  it  seems 
to  me,  is  how  the  history  of  any  art  should 
be  written ;  not  in  a  generalised  sketch  of 
'tendencies,'  'schools,'  and  the  like,  but  in 
an  eager  disentangling  of  the  personality  of 
each  artist,  of  his  aims  in  working,  and  of 
the  manner  of  his  work.  In  this  research 
into  the  springs  of  action,  every  word  that 
an  artist  has  let  fall  about  his  own  art  is  of 
value  as  evidence.  Mr.  MacColl's  book  is  a 
storehouse  of  such  quotations,  chosen  with 
great  skill ;  and  it  contains  no  other  quota- 
tions, it  is  indebted  to  no  other  critic,  it  is 
all  his  own. 

The  modern  criticism  of  painting  in  Eng- 
land has  been  for  the  most  part,  somewhat 
accidental ;    we    have    had,    since    Kuskin, 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    35 

one  or  two  good  books  and  many  good 
detached  essays,  but  no  body  of  really  fine 
art  criticism.  The  influence  of  Ruskin  has 
undoubtedly  been  a  good  influence  ;  beauty 
was  to  him,  literally,  what  a  Frenchman  has 
called  it,  a  religion ;  and  he  preached  the 
religion  of  beauty  at  a  period  almost  as  much 
absorbed  in  the  pedantries  of  science  and  the 
ignominies  of  material  success  as  the  present 
period.  Much  of  his  force  came  from  his 
narrowness  ;  you  cannot  be  a  prophet  and  a 
disinterested  analyst  at  the  same  time. 
Ruskin  did  more  than  any  man  of  our 
century  to  interest  Englishmen  in  beautiful 
things,  and  it  matters  little  whether  his 
choice  among  beautiful  things  was  always 
really  the  choice  of  an  artist.  He  could 
convince  the  stubborn  and  Philistine  British 
public,  or  he  could  brow-beat  that  public  into 
fancying  that  it  ought  to  be  convinced. 
William  Morris,  who  made  all  kinds  of 
beautiful  things  himself,  and  who  also  tried 
to  argue  on  behalf  of  beauty  as  a  socialist 
orator,  has  had  very  much  less  influence  on 
the  bulk  of  the  British  public.  Morris, 
however,  was  really  continuing  the  work 
which  Buskin  began. 


36         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

Had  Walter  Pater  devoted  himself  ex- 
clusively to  art  criticism,  there  is  no  doubt 
that,  in  a  sense,  he  would  have  been  a 
great  art  critic.  There  are  essays  scattered 
throughout  his  work,  the  essay  on  '  The 
School  of  Giorgione,'  for  instance,  in  which 
the  essentia]  principles  of  the  art  of  painting 
are  divined  and  interpreted  with  extra- 
ordinary subtlety.  I  remember  hearing  him 
say,  that,  as  he  grew  older,  books  interested 
him  less  and  less,  pictures  delighted  him  more 
and  more.  But  with  him  art  criticism  was  but 
one  function  of  a  close,  delicate,  unceasing 
criticism  of  life  ;  and  the  ideas  at  the  root  of 
painting,  as  well  as  of  every  other  form  of 
the  activity  of  the  spirit,  meant  more  to  him, 
in  spite  of  his  striving  after  absolute  justice, 
than  the  painting  itself  Thus,  even  in  that 
admirable  essay  on  Giorgione,  he  could  leave 
out  all  mention  of  '  The  Geometricians '  in 
the  Vienna  Gallery,  as,  in  writing  subtly 
about  the  ideas  of  Coleridge,  he  could  leave 
out  '  Kubla  Khan '  from  the  selection  of 
Coleridge's  poetry  which  was  to  accompany 
his  essay.  As  it  was,  he  corrected  many  of 
the  generous  and  hasty  errors  of  Ruskin, 
and  helped  to  bring  back  criticism  to  a  wiser 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    37 

and   more   tolerant    attitude   towards    the 
arts. 

Everything  that  Mr.  Whistler  has  written 
about  painting  deserves  to  be  taken  seriously, 
and  read  with  understanding.  Written  in 
French,  and  signed  by  Baudelaire,  his  truths, 
and  paradoxes  reflecting  truths,  would  have 
been  realised  for  what  they  are.  Written 
in  English,  and  obscurely  supposed  to  con- 
ceal some  dangerous  form  of  humour,  they 
are  left  for  the  most  part  unconsidered  by  the 
'serious'  public  of  the  annual  picture  galleries. 

There  is  one  book  by  another  writer  who 
has  not  always  been  fairly  treated,  Mr.  George 
Moore's  '  Modern  Painting,'  which  stands 
out  among  the  art  criticism  of  our  time.  It 
is  full  of  injustice,  brutality,  and  ignorance  ; 
but  it  is  full  also  of  the  most  generous 
justice,  the  most  discriminating  sympathy, 
and  the  genuine  knowledge  of  the  painter. 
It  is  hastily  thought  out,  hastily  written; 
but  there,  in  those  vivid,  direct,  unscrupu- 
lously logical  pages,  you  will  find  some  of 
the  secrets  of  the  art  of  painting,  let  out, 
so  to  speak,  by  an  intelligence  all  sensa- 
tion, which  has  soaked  them  up  without 
knowing  it. 


38         STUDIES   IN    SEVEN  ARTS 

In  Mr.  MacColl  we  have  the  art  critic 
who  is  at  once  the  painter,  the  man  of 
letters,  and  the  learned  student  of  his  art 
and  of  its  history.  He  writes  with  authority, 
and  his  writing  is  as  good  as  if  he  were 
merely  amusing  himself  with  phrases.  Listen 
to  a  few  of  the  phrases,  and  observe  how 
just  is  the  criticism  expressed  with  so  much 
point  and  brilliance.  Of  Daumier  he  says  : 
'  Daumier's  style  is  grand  and  elemental,  his 
matter  is  trivial ;  his  effect  is  the  angry 
assault  of  that  drawing  on  this  matter,  the 
tilt  of  the  lance  against  the  windmill  and 
the  sheep.'  Of  Albert  Moore  :  '  He  is  a 
Pygmalion  who  transforms  the  woman  into 
marble.'  Of  Degas :  '  If  gymnastic  and 
poetry  have  parted  company,  he  takes  the 
spirit  of  gymnastic  where  it  is.'  The  work 
of  Boucher  is  '  the  play  and  gallantry  of 
Rubens  in  its  last  dishevelment.'  And  of 
music  he  says,  with  more  amplification,  more 
extravagance,  if  you  will :  '  An  art  that  came 
out  of  the  old  world  two  centuries  ago  with  a 
few  chants,  love  songs,  and  dances,  that  a  cen- 
tury ago  was  still  tied  to  the  words  of  a  mass 
or  opera,  or  threading  little  dance  movements 
together  in  a  "  suite,"  became,  in  the  last 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    39 

century,  this  extraordinary  debauch,  in  which 
the  man  who  has  never  seen  a  battle,  loved 
a  woman,  or  worshipped  a  god  may  not  only 
ideally,  but  through  the  response  of  his 
nerves  and  pulses  to  immediate  rhythmical 
attack,  enjoy  the  ghosts  of  struggle,  rapture, 
and  exaltation  with  a  volume  and  intricacy, 
an  anguish,  a  triumph,  an  irresponsibility 
unheard  of.'  Sometimes,  it  is  true,  Mr. 
MacColl's  vision  and  judgment  seem  to  be 
limited  a  little  by  the  narrowing  perfection 
of  his  own  definitions.  He  flashes  them  out, 
and  they  solidify  and  look  so  well  on  the 
page  that  they  seem  to  him  final.  And  also, 
in  his  sentences,  the  imagery  can  become,  at 
times,  a  little  ferocious,  the  emphasis  a  little 
mechanical  in  its  reiteration.  He  says  of 
Courbet :  '  He  will  have  no  blasphemy  of 
matter ;  he  lets  down  among  the  painter 
Kabbis  a  St.  Peter's  sheet,  filled  with  crea- 
tures banned  as  common  and  unclean  in  their 
Numbers  and  Deuteronomy,  and  proclaims 
them  all  blessed  by  light.'  The  bricks,  in  his 
work,  are  often  better  than  the  building. 
Every  sentence  in  a  paragraph  may  be  good, 
but  the  paragraph  has  only  rarely  the  air  of 
having  been  composed  after  a  pattern,  or  to  a 


40         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

tune.  Most  of  the  sentences  could  be  trans- 
posed, each  with  its  separate  thing  worth  say- 
inor  and  well  said,  and  none  of  them  would  be 
the  worse  for  the  chanore.  It  is  in  this  flaw, 
perhaps,  that  one  distinguishes  the  writer  to 
whom  writing  is  a  supplementary  profession, 
the  writer  who  is  first  of  all  a  painter. 


n 

'  What  exactly/  says  Mr.  MacColl,  *  was 
the  special  and  final  addition  made  to  the 
instrument  of  painting  in  the  nineteenth 
century?  It  may  be  expressed  by  saying 
that  painting  accepted  at  last  the  full  con- 
tents of  vision  as  material,  all  that  is  given 
in  the  coloured  camera-reflection  of  the  real 
world.'  So  far  so  good,  but  is  that  all,  or 
even  the  essential  part,  of  what  the  painting 
of  the  century  has  tried  to  do  ?  Is  it  not 
rather  that  modern  painters  have  tried  to 
do  with  the  aid  of  nature  what  the  old 
painters  did  without  it  ?  to  find  the  pattern 
and  rhythm  of  their  pictures  in  nature  itself 
rather  than  in  their  own  brains  and  on  their 
own  palettes  ?  It  is  not  merely  a  question 
of  seeing  things  as  they  are,  and  '  accepting 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    41 

the  full  contents  of  vision  as  material ' ;  it  is 
the  deeper  and  more  difficult  question  of 
getting  nature,  seen  frankly,  into  the  pattern, 
instead  of  coming  to  nature  with  one's 
pattern  ready  made. 

Mr.  MacColl  has  said,  in  speaking  of 
Turner,  precisely  what  might  be  said  of  the 
whole  movement  of  the  century.  Turner's 
design,  he  says,  '  is  not  a  rhythm  forced  on 
objects  from  without  or  uncertainly  appre- 
hended in  them.  It  is  an  eye  for  their  own 
principle  of  construction,  their  private 
rhythm.  ...  To  conquer  the  anatomy  and 
architecture  of  clouds  as  well  as  stationary 
rock  and  tree  was  a  feat  wonderful  enough. 
But  to  surprise  an  intricate  rhythm  in  the 
welter  of  waves,  to  wreathe  a  sculpture  out 
of  the  waste  wrath  and  torment  of  the  sea, 
was  his  supreme  triumph.'  There,  in  that 
triumphant  instance,  we  get  the  new  aim, 
the  new  success.  We  shall  see  all  that  is 
meant  by  the  difference  if  we  turn  to  an 
older  painter  who  is  a  great  master  of 
rhythm,  to  Botticelli.  Take,  among  Bot- 
ticelli's work,  the  '  Entombment '  in  the 
Munich  Gallery.  Observe  how,  in  that  pro- 
found and  lovely  picture,  the  rhythm  which 


42         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

unites  all  those  bending  figures  is  a  rhythm 
not  inherent  in  the  figures  themselves,  not 
a  part  of  their  nature,  or  even  of  their  actual 
movement,  but  brought  into  them  by  the 
painter,  for  the  sake  of  a  fine  music  which  it 
will  make  in  the  picture.  Or,  to  set  sea- 
painting  against  sea-painting,  compare  those 
waves  of  Turner  with  the  little,  wing-like 
waves  which  carry  forward  the  shell  on  which 
Venus  is  brought  to  land,  in  the  '  Birth  of 
Venus,'  in  the  Ufiizi.  There,  as  always  in 
Botticelli,  you  get  a  rhythm  which  winds 
into  its  own  pattern  flawlessly  ;  only,  the 
pattern  is  not  nature's  nor  seen  in  nature. 

The  sentiment  of  nature,  as  it  enters  into 
the  painting  of  the  nineteenth  century,  is  a 
new  thing  in  art.  Try  to  imagine  Millet  in 
any  other  century !  To  the  old  painters 
nature  did  not  exist  as  nature,  only  as 
decoration,  or  as  the  interest  of  locality.  It 
was  a  matter  for  backgrounds,  a  device  for 
'  stationing,'  in  Keats's  phrase,  their  figures 
or  their  drama.  When  nature  '  put  them 
out,'  it  could  be  altered  at  will ;  when  nature 
pleased  them,  it  could  be  copied  separately, 
with  a  separate  focussing  of  each  square  inch 
of  stones  or  grass.      There  was  the   play- 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    43 

building  of  topography,  in  clear  Italian 
backgrounds,  little  walled  cities  on  a  hill, 
with  their  paved  roads  and  chequer-work  of 
streets  and  gardens ;  and  there  was  the 
painter's  delight  in  separate  natural  effects, 
in  flowers  or  colours.  But  the  interest  has 
no  guardian  feeling  of  fidelity  or  sense  of 
honour  towards  nature.  Even  Gloro-ione  is 
occupied  in  making  the  world  a  place  of  rest 
or  enchantment  for  the  men  and  women  who 
enjoy  its  leisure.  No  one  has  realised  that 
nature  can  be  treated  on  terms  of  equality. 

To  the  painters  of  the  nineteenth  century 
nature  is  life,  religion,  responsibility,  or 
seduction.  There  is  the  devout  sincerity  of 
the  eye  to  things  seen  ;  there  is  the  mind's 
acceptance  of  the  principle  of  life  in  visible 
things.  From  the  conjunction  of  this  thought 
and  sight  we  get  the  special  character  of 
modern  painting,  Impressionism,  in  a  broad 
sense  the  pictorial  art  of  the  century,  is,  in 
its  essential  aim,  limited  to  an  immediate 
noting  of  light,  movement,  expression ;  to 
the  exquisite  record  of  an  instant.  Is  it,  in 
Browning's  phrase,  '  the  instant  made 
eternity '  ?  If  the  instant,  however  deftly 
rendered,  remains  temporary,  you  may  have, 


44         STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

perhaps,  some  of  Monet's  work,  but  you  will 
have  no  more  than  a  shorthand  note,  which 
the  reporter  has  not  even  troubled  to  copy- 
out.  If  the  instant,  '  changed  not  in  kind 
but  in  degree,'  takes  on  that  incalculable 
aspect,  as  of  a  thing  which  has  always  existed 
and  must  always  go  on  existing,  you  have 
the  equivalent,  under  new  conditions,  of 
those  masterpieces  of  the  past  which  can 
never  be  repeated,  but  which  may,  in  any 
age,  be  equalled. 

'  The  painting  of  nature,'  says  Mr.  Mac- 
Coll,  very  justly,  *  is  not  always  compatible 
with  the  nature  of  paint,  and  the  "  sense  of 
nature"  depends  as  much  upon  humour- 
ing the  nature  of  the  paint  as  upon 
pressing  the  nature  of  the  thing,  upon  fresh- 
ness, limpid  ease,  untired  response.'  '  Manet 
and  Mr.  Whistler,'  he  says  elsewhere,  in  a 
sentence  which  might  follow  this  one,  '  are 
the  two  artists  of  their  time  who  are  natives  of 
paint,  who  make  a  sticky  rebellious  substance 
a  magical  liquid  matter.'  In  other  words,  it 
is  in  Manet  and  in  Whistler,  among  the 
painters  of  our  own  age,  that  we  can  see 
best  what  the  nineteenth  century  has  been 
aiming  at  in  painting.     Of  each  it  could  be 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    45 

said,  as  Mr.  MacColl  says  of  Manet :  '  He 
resaw  the  world,  remade  its  pictorial  aspect.* 
'  He  never  runs  away  from  his  daring  vision,' 
says  Mr.  MacColl,  further,  of  Manet,  'to 
take  refuge  in  a  far-away  dirty  reasonable- 
ness ;  supplies  no  buffers  for  the  timid  eye, 
but  risks  all  on  the  exact  rightness  of  the 
essential  relations.'  And  of  Whistler,  not 
less  justly  :  '  He  has  the  faith  of  this  art  of 
tones  that  there  is  a  sacred  integrity  of 
beauty  in  an  object  seen  in  its  own  air,  its 
own  light,  its  own  week,  its  own  house  ;  that 
"  invention,"  when  it  contravenes  the  logic 
of  this  beauty,  tears  away  just  the  integu- 
ment in  which  the  choicest  visible  life 
abides,' 

To  Manet,  in  his  vision  of  the  world, 
everything  existed  in  hard  outline.  Late  in 
life  he  tried  to  see  more  in  Monet's  way, 
but  when  he  was  ushig  only  his  own  eyes, 
it  was  natural  to  him  to  be  very  heedful  of 
the  silhouette.  In  seeing,  and  in  rendering 
what  he  saw,  Manet  has,  above  all,  audacity  ; 
he  cannot  conceal  his  delight  in  the  paint 
which  comes  out  of  his  brush  like  life  itself 
I  have  seen  painters,  standing  before  a 
canvas  of  Manet,  lost  in   delight   over  the 


46         STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

surprising  way  in  which  the  paint  comes 
alive,  with  a  beauty  inherent  in  itself,  yet 
always  on  its  way  to  express  something.  I 
was  able  to  imagine,  from  a  reproduction, 
what  a  certain  'Girl's  Head  '  must  be  in  itself, 
when  the  actual  touch  could  be  followed  ;  and 
how  its  severe,  exhilarating  beauty,  in  which 
there  is  neither  waste  nor  excess,  with  no 
more  separable  meaning  than  that  actually 
explicit  in  a  living  face  at  which  one  has 
looked  long,  must  have  deadened  or  emptied 
every  picture  hung  near  it,  as  the  '  Olympia ' 
does  in  one  room  of  the  Luxembourg,  and  as 
Whistler's  '  Portrait  of  his  Mother '  does  in 
the  next  room.  When  I  came  to  see  the 
picture  afterwards,  in  the  International  Ex- 
hibition of  1905,  it  was  near  another,  later, 
more  famous  picture  of  Manet,  '  Le  Linge,' 
and  not  far  off  were  two  pictures  of  Cezanne 
and  two  pictures  of  Carriere.  Cezanne  has 
reduced  painting  to  a  kind  of  science,  the 
science  of  disempassioned  technique.  '  Ce- 
zanne,' says  Charles  Morice,  '  ne  s'interesse 
pas  plus  a  un  visage  qu'a  une  pomme,  et 
celui-la  comme  celle-ci  n'ont  d'autre  valeur 
a  ses  yeux  que  d'etre  des  "  valours,"  parce 
que  Cezanne  n'a  que  des  yeux.'     The  land- 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    47 

scape  and  the  still-life  study  are  seen  with 
exactly  the  same  childlike  intentness,  seen 
in  the  child's  convention  of  hard  outline, 
and  with  all  the  emphasis  of  an  eye  which 
chases  sentiment  out  of  natural  things,  that 
it  may  take  them  naked  and  alone.  But,  it 
may  be  questioned,  are  things  ever  either 
naked  or  alone  in  nature  ?  Look  from 
Cezanne  to  Carriere  and  you  will  see  that 
everything  in  the  picture,  this  '  Maternite,' 
this  '  Mere  et  Fille,'  is  made  up  of  '  corre- 
spondences,' of  the  harmonies  which  envelop 
and  unite  life  with  life,  life  with  nature  ;  that 
here  is  a  vision  of  reality  so  intense  that 
the  mere  statement  of  facts  no  longer  needs 
emphasis.  Cezanne's  '  nature  morte  '  is  a 
lump  of  the  world  cut  out  with  a  knife ;  in 
Carriere  the  rhythm  of  his  mother  and  child 
almost  evades  the  limits  of  the  frame,  seems 
a  wave  of  the  sea  arrested  in  its  motion  and 
as  if  still  in  movement.  In  Carriere,  as  in 
Rodin,  there  are  no  specimens,  but  growing- 
things  ;  the  flower  scarcely  plucked,  still 
alive  from  the  root,  a  part  not  yet  cut  off  from 
universal  nature.  And  that  is  why  Rodin 
leaves  the  foundations  of  his  form  unshaped 
in  the  marble,  why  he  gives  the  animate 


48         STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

being  some  foothold  on  the  earth ;  and  why 
Carriere  evokes  a  mist  or  twilight  which 
clothes  his  humanity  with  that  tenderness 
that  lurks  transformingly  behind  our  eyes 
when  we  look  on  one  another,  not  in  observa- 
tion (which  is  science),  but  in  love  (which  is 
the  beginning  of  art). 

And  now  turn  to  Manet.  '  Manet's  mind/ 
says  Mr.  MacColl,  '  is  that  joyful,  heedless 
mind  of  summer,  beneath  or  above  thoug-ht, 
the  intense  sensation  of  life  with  its  lights 
and  colours,  coming  and  going  in  the  head.' 
'  In  Manet  there  is  nothing  but  good  paint- 
ing.' says  Mr.  Moore,  in  those  admirable  and 
revealing  pages  at  the  beginning  of  '  Modern 
Painting.'  In  those  two  definitions  we  get, 
surely,  the  final  definition  of  the  painter  as 
painter,  and  they  say  no  more  than  the 
strict  truth  about  Manet.  Look  at  the 
girl's  head,  and  you  will  find  in  it  a  magic 
which  is  not  magic  at  all,  so  far  as  magic  is 
an  evasion  or  a  message  from  outside  nature  ; 
the  life  that  is  there  is  a  life  of  frank  paint, 
neither  asserting  nor  concealing  itself ;  there 
is  no  sentiment  which  we  can  be  conscious 
of,  no  tenderness  as  with  Carriere,  yet  still 
less  is  there  the  scientific  coldness  of  Cezanne. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    49 

It  is  as  if  the  painter  were  like  the  sun 
itself;  an  energy  beyond  good  and  evil,  an 
immense  benevolence,  creating  without 
choice  or  preference  out  of  the  need  of  giving 
birth  to  life.  There  never  was  such  a 
homage  to  light,  to  light  as  the  principle  of 
life,  as  in  *Le  Linge,'  where  the  vivifying 
rays  of  that  impartial  sunlight  can  soak  with 
equal  thirst  into  the  ugliness  of  the  child 
and  into  the  loveliness  of  the  linen.  And 
you  may  hate  the  picture  as  you  may  hate  a 
day  of  overpowering  heat,  yet  be  no  more 
able  to  get  away  from  it  than  you  could 
withdraw  from  the  ardour  of  nature. 

In  Whistler  it  is  the  reality  that  astonishes 
me  the  most,  and  the  variety  with  which  he 
represents  that  reality,  going  clean  through 
outward  things  to  their  essence,  that  is,  to 
their  essential  reality ;  never,  like  Fantin, 
setting  up  an  invention  in  the  place  of  nature. 
It  is  remarkable  that  an  artist  who  may 
seem,  in  his  words,  to  have  denied  nature, 
or  to  have  put  himself  arrogantly  in  the 
place  of  nature,  should,  in  his  pictures,  have 
given  us  no  image,  no  outline,  no  shade  or 
colour,  which  is  not  evoked  out  of  a  thing 
really    seen    and     delicately    remembered. 


50         STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

Tracing  the  course  of  his  pictures  from  first 
to  last  one  sees  the  technique  changing  from 
what  is  in  a  sense  a  realistic  to  what  seems 
an  evasive  manner ;  from  the  Courbet-like 
'Wave'  of  1861,  with  its  shouldering 
strength  and  heavy  paint,  to  the  '  Nocturne, 
Blue  and  Green '  of  the  Thames  water  asleep, 
or  to  those  aspects  of  people  and  things  in 
which  a  butterfly  seems  to  have  left  a  little 
of  its  coloured  dust  on  a  flower  as  it  alights 
and  passes. 

Whistler  has  his  own  world,  which  is 
neither  splendid  nor  affluent,  like  the  world 
of  Watts,  but  exquisite  and  exact,  and  this 
world  he  evokes  with  certainty  and  aloofness, 
the  artist's  aloofness  from  the  aspects  which 
he  chooses,  for  his  own  pleasure,  out  of 
visible  things.  And,  in  his  disinterested 
greediness,  which  would  follow  and  capture 
the  whole  of  his  own  part  of  the  world,  he 
experiments  with  many  mediums,  and  has 
many  manners,  though  only  one  style.  Each 
of  his  pictures  has  its  '  minutely  appropriate ' 
beauty,  its  '  minutely  appropriate  '  handling. 
In  the  '  Blue  Wave '  we  see  him  literally 
workinof  with  Courbet,  and  this,  like  the 
building  of   Westminster   Bridge,    has    the 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    51 

direct,  almost  violent  truthfulness  of  Courbet. 
In  '  At  the  Piano '  we  have  all  that  was 
most  significant  in  the  Pre-Raphaelite  move- 
ment summed  up  and  surpassed ;  the 
'  Shipping  in  the  Thames,'  with  its  pale 
greys  and  pinks,  the  ghost  of  a  landscape,  is 
pure  Puvis  de  Chavannes ;  in  '  The  Purple 
Cap '  we  get  all  Albert  Moore,  and  how 
much  besides  !  Whatever  '  The  A¥hite  Girl ' 
or  '  At  the  Mirror '  owed  to  Rossetti  was  a 
debt  already  paid  before  the  picture  was 
finished.  Japan  and  Velasquez,  whenever 
they  are  seen,  are  seen  through  creative  eyes. 
And  just  as  in  the  landscapes  and  seascapes 
we  see  the  paint  thinning,  clarifying,  be- 
coming more  exquisitely  and  exactly  expres- 
sive, so  in  the  portraits  and  figure-pieces 
we  can  trace  the  elimination  of  effort,  the 
spiritualising  of  paint  itself;  in  the  white, 
for  instance,  cold  in  '  The  White  Girl '  of 
1862,  more  luminous  in  the  third  '  Symphony 
in  White  '  of  1867,  and  finally,  in  the  '  Miss 
Alexander'  of  the  early  seventies,  a  white 
which  is  like  the  soul  of  a  colour,  caught  and 
fixed  there  by  some  incalculable  but  pre- 
cisely calculated  magic.  It  ends,  of  course, 
by  being  the  ghost  of  a  colour,  as  in  '  The 


52         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

Convalescent ' ;  but;  all  things  in  Whistler 
end,  when  their  particular  life  is  over,  by 
becoming  the  ghosts  of  themselves. 

Whistler  begins  by  building  his  world 
after  nature's,  with  supports  as  solid  and  as 
visible.  Gradually  he  knocks  away  support 
after  support,  expecting  the  structure  to 
support  itself  by  its  own  consciousness,  so  to 
speak.  At  the  perfect  moment  he  gives  to 
the  eye  just  enough  to  catch  in  the  outlines 
of  things  that  it  may  be  able  to  complete 
them  by  that  imaginative  sympathy  which 
is  part  of  the  seeing  of  works  of  art.  But 
he  can  never  be  content  with  that  service, 
and  demands  ever  more  and  more  of  it,  in 
his  challenge  with  things,  with  himself. 
And  he  comes  finally  to  suppose  that  all 
eyes  have  the  sight  and  sensitiveness  of  his 
own  ;  which  is  as  if  one  were  to  expect  the 
ABC  class  to  read  Euclid  off  the  black- 
board. 

The  attitude  towards  Whistler  of  the  older 
critics  and  of  the  public  of  yesterday  was  that 
of  a  rather  vulgar  curiosity.  He  had  shown 
them  a  glimpse,  and  they  wanted  a  gulp ; 
and  they  pressed  close  to  the  canvas  to  see 
what  a  policeman  sees   when  he  turns  his 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    53 

bull's-eye  on  the  lock  of  a  door.  But  the 
closer  they  got  the  less  they  saw,  and  they 
went  away  in  a  rage  and  said  there  was 
nothing  to  see.  A  great  man  did  a  great 
wrong  by  doing  that :  the  picture  which  he 
thought  a  pot  of  paint  flung  in  the  face  of 
the  public  can  be  seen  to-day  in  a  private 
collection,  exquisite  in  its  beauty  ;  and  what 
Ruskin  could  do  seemed  to  receive  a  sanction 
for  the  public  which  had  just  got  far  enough 
to  see  Ruskin.  The  other  picture,  which 
Burne- Jones  bore  witness  against  in  1878, 
and  which  in  1905  is  in  the  National 
Gallery,  the  '  Nocturne  in  Blue  and  Silver,' 
was  in  the  Exhibition  of  that  year,  and  I 
had  been  sitting  in  front  of  it  for  a  long- 
time, drinking  in  its  cool  and  remote 
harmony  with  unusual  delight,  l)efore  some- 
one come  up  to  me  and  told  me  that  it  was 
this  picture  which  seemed  to  Burne- Jones 
(who  yet  had  a  sense  of  humour)  like  a  bad 
joke.  Vulgar  curiosity  is  never  gratified  in 
any  of  Whistler's  pictures.  He  never  stared 
at  nature,  and  you  must  not  stare  at  his 
pictures.  He  treated  nature  as  a  gentle- 
man treats  a  lady,  and  his  fine  manners 
were  rewarded  by  exquisite  revelations.     I 


54         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

am  sure  that  when  he  was  painting  a 
portrait  he  tried  not  to  see  his  sitter,  but 
to  let  that  sitter  surprise  him,  as  a  delicate 
artist  in  words  lets  himself  be  surprised  by 
ideas,  each  surprise  being  like  a  sudden 
light.  There  is  always  a  certain  stealth 
about  magic,  and  the  magical  quality  did 
not  come  into  Whistler's  pictures  by  a 
forthright  effort.  But  he  prepared  for  it,  and 
with  ceremony,  as  one  prepares  for  the 
reception  of  a  guest. 


Ill 

In  the  nineteenth  century,  as  in  every 
century,  there  have  been  painters  who  have 
deliberately  turned  backwards  or  aside ; 
haters  of  their  own  time,  haters  of  reality, 
dreamers  who  have  wanted  to  gather  in 
some  corner  of  unlimited  space.  Poets 
rather  than  painters,  the  visible  world  has 
seemed  too  narrow  for  them  ;  and  one,  like 
Monticelli,  has  tried  to  paint  in  terms  of 
music,  and  another,  like  Rossetti,  has  tried 
to  put  the  spiritual  mysteries  of  passion,  or 
like  Watts,  the  bodily  form  of  great  emotion 
and  high  duties,  literally  upon  the  canvas. 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    55 

Theodore  Chasseriau  comes  partly  into  this 
company;  his  pupil,  in  a  sense,  Gustave 
Moreau,  belongs  to  it  wholly  ;  and  there  is 
Puvis  de  Chavannes  (with  a  difference),  and 
Simeon  Solomon,  and  Burne-Jones,  and 
Felicien  Rops,  and  Aubrey  Beardsley. 
Most  of  them  are  not  perfectly  equipped 
as  painters,  but  may  seem  to  escape  from 
some  at  least  of  their  limitations  by  this 
commerce  with  another  world.  All  have  an 
interest  beyond  their  mere  skill  as  painters, 
with  various  kinds  of  appeal  to  those  who 
go  to  art  for  something  which  is  certainly 
not  the  art  of  it.  They  set  up  wayside  idols 
to  strange  gods,  and  bow  down  before  the 
Prince  of  the  Power  of  the  Air.  Some 
have  a  devil,  others  speak  with  tongues. 
They  stir  the  curiosity  of  their  contem- 
poraries more  keenly  than  the  painters 
who  merely  paint ;  and  are  easier  to  discuss, 
and  more  amusing  to  write  about.  One 
translates  his  own  pictures  into  sonnets, 
another  composes  '  A  Vision  of  Love  in 
Sleep,'  in  melodious  prose ;  and  Moreau 
will  live  in  the  pages  which  Huysmans 
has  written  about  him,  at  least  as  long  as  in 
his  pictures. 


56         STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

I  am  glad  that  Mr.  MacColl  has  done,  at 
last,  full  justice  to  Chass^riau,  a  painter  who 
is  little  known,  even  in  France,  where  he 
did  something  to  begin  several  movements. 
'  The  noble  force,  the  tired  exotic  grace,  the 
fluid  grey  and  gold  of  the  deeps  of  the  air 
.  .  .  quelque  chose  qui  soil  royale  et  qui 
rested  can  be  divined  even  in  the  reproduc- 
tion of  his  '  Esther,'  in  which  the  slim  young 
body,  and  the  arms  lifted  to  knot  the  hair, 
recall  the  more  desperate  gesture  of  a 
'  Daphne,'  stiffening  already  into  the  friendly 
embrace  of  the  laurel-tree,  as  the  hunter, 
Apollo,  leaps  forward,  radiant  and  too  late. 
I  remember  an  English  painter,  of  a  wholly 
different  school,  stopping  short  with  delight, 
and  pulling  out  his  sketch-book  to  note  the 
gesture,  as  he  came  into  a  room  in  which  I 
once  had  a  print  of  the  '  Daphne  '  hanging. 

One  '  strain '  of  Chasseriau,  as  Mr.  Mac 
Coll  notes,  works  out  in  the  '  monumental 
art,  full  of  ancient  quiet,  of  the  gods  and 
their  sacred  seats,'  of  Puvis  de  Chavannes ; 
another,  '  Greco-Indian,  exotic  and  seduc- 
tive,' in  '  the  fevered  impotence  of  Gustave 
Moreau,  a  lover  of  the  pungent  spices  and 
heavy  incense  of  painting,   but   unable   to 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    57 

distil  them  from  the  thing.'  Moreau  has 
been  chiefly  praised  for  qualities  which 
belong  rather  to  literature  than  to  painting, 
and  much  of  his  work  is  like  the  idolatry  of 
a  savage  drugged  with  opium.  He  has 
brought  together  the  spoils  of  many  altars, 
heaped  mythology  on  mythology,  and 
wrought  out  of  his  head  a  barbarous  mosaic 
of  decorative  detail,  which  has  been  seen  in 
no  light  in  which  human  eyes  ever  saw. 
Legendary  figures  pose  academically  among 
landscapes  of  vegetable  jewels.  But  in 
some  of  his  work,  done  for  enamelling  or  for 
the  tapestry  of  the  Gobelins,  fantasies  in 
which  plain  colour  is  placed  against  plain 
colour,  and  the  drawing  is  rigid  and  as  if 
petrified,  weave  admirable  patterns,  exactly 
suiting  those  two  formal  mediums.  And,  in 
some  small  water-colours  hung  lately  in  the 
Luxembourg,  among  more  ambitious  failures, 
there  were  miracles  of  sheer  painter's  colour, 
hardly  attached  to  anything,  a  mosaic  of 
precious  stones,  but  with  all  the  inner  fires 
of  the  jewels  flaming  out  of  the  canvas. 

One,  the  unluckiest,  of  these  dreamers 
who  have  made  a  world  '  a  rehours,'  and 
have  lived  persistently  in  it,    'though  the 


58         STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

world,'  the  other  world,  may  have  had  only 
'  a  horror  of  their  joy,'  is  Simeon  Solomon, 
a  painter  who  lived  on,  forgotten,  some- 
where or  other,  until  1905,  when  his  death 
in  the  workhouse  opened  to  hira  once  more 
the  doors  of  the  Royal  Academy.  Mr. 
MacColl  does  not  mention  him,  though  two 
of  his  pictures  were  in  the  Glasgow  Exhibi- 
tion ;  but  it  seems  to  me  that  he  has  his 
place,  not  far  from  Burne-Jones,  in  any 
record  of  the  painting  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Had  circumstances  been  kinder 
to  him,  or  had  he  been  other  than  himself, 
he  would  have  been  a  formidable  rival  for 
Burne-Jones,  '  where  travellers  of  his  tribe/ 
as  Mr.  MacColl  says,  '  will  still  be  waylaid, 
on  the  confines  of  glamour  and  sleep.'  Look 
through  the  catalogue  of  the  Boyal  Academy 
and  of  the  Dudley  Gallery,  between  1865 
and  1872,  and  you  will  find  picture  after 
picture,  from  the  *  Lady  in  the  Chinese 
Dress,'  with  its  bad  drawing  and  queer, 
orchid- like  colour,  and  exotic  and  enigmati- 
cal expressiveness,  to  the  Academy  '  Judith 
and  her  attendant  going  to  the  Assyrian 
Camp,'  of  1872.  The  very  names,  '  Love  in 
Winter,'  *  Sacramentum  Amoris,'  '  Hosanna,' 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    59 

suggest  Burne-Jones,  though  they  are 
exactly  parallel  in  date,  and  are  as  likely 
to  represent  an  influence  as  a  following. 
Others  have  a  more  definitely  Jewish  char- 
acter, '  The  Three  Holy  Children  in  the 
Fiery  Furnace,'  the  *  Patriarch  of  the 
Eastern  Church  pronouncing  the  Benedic- 
tion of  Peace,'  the  '  Carrying  the  Law  in 
the  Synagogue  of  Geneva ' ;  while  perhaps 
what  was  most  significant  in  this  strange 
temperament  is  seen  in  such  pictures  as 
''  The  Sleepers  and  the  One  that  Waketh.' 
Three  faces,  faint  with  languor,  two  with 
closed  eyes  and  the  other  with  eyes  wearily 
open,  lean  together,  cheek  on  cheek,  between 
white,  sharp-edged  stars  in  a  background  of 
dim  sky.  These  faces,  with  their  spectral 
pallor,  the  robes  of  faint  purple  tinged  with 
violet,  are  fall  of  morbid  delicacy,  like  the 
painting  of  a  perfume.  Here,  as  always, 
there  is  weakness,  insecurity,  but  also  a 
very  personal  sense  of  beauty,  which  this 
only  half-mastered  technique  is  just  able  to 
bring  out  upon  the  canvas,  in  at  least  a 
suggestion  of  everything  that  the  painter 
meant. 

In  later  years  Solomon  restricted  himself 


60         STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

to  single  heads  drawn  in  coloured  chalks, 
sometimes  two  heads  facing  one  another, 
the  Saviour  and  Mary  Magdalen,  the  Virgin 
and  the  Angel  of  the  Annunciation.  The 
drawing  becomes  more  and  more  nerveless, 
the  expression  loses  delicacy  and  hardens 
into  the  caricature  of  an  emotion,  the 
faint  suggestions  of  colour  become  more 
pronounced,  more  crudely  asserted.  In 
the  latest  drawings  of  all,  we  see  no 
more  than  the  splintering  wreck  of  a 
painter's  technique.  But  as  lately  as  ten 
years  ago  he  could  still  produce,  with  an 
almost  mechanical  ease,  sitting  at  a  crowded 
table  in  a  Clerkenwell  news-room,  those 
drawings  which  we  see  reproduced  by  some 
cheap  process  of  facsimile,  in  pink  or  in 
black,  and  sold  in  the  picture-shops  in 
Regent  Street,  Oxford  Street,  and  Museum 
Street,  They  have  legends  under  them  out 
of  the  Bible,  in  Latin,  or  out  of  Dante,  in 
Italian ;  or  they  have  the  names  of  the 
Seven  Virtues,  or  of  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins  ; 
or  are  images  of  Sleep  and  Death  and  Twi- 
light. '  A  void  and  wonderfully  vague 
desire '  fills  all  these  hollow  faces,  as  water 
fills   the   hollow  pools    of  the   sand ;    they 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    61 

have  the  soitow  of  those  who  have  no  cause 
for  sorrow  except  that  they  are  as  they  are 
in  a  world  not  made  after  their  pattern. 
The  hps  are  sucked  back  and  the  chin  thrust 
forward  in  a  languor  which  becomes  a  man- 
nerism, like  the  long  thin  throats,  and  heavy 
half-closed  eyes  and  cheeks  haggard  with 
fever  or  exhaustion.  The  same  face,  varied 
a  little  in  mood,  scarcely  in  feature,  serves 
for  Christ  and  the  two  Marys,  for  Sleep  and 
for  Lust.  The  lips  are  scarcely  roughened 
to  indicate  a  man,  the  throats  scarcely 
lengthened  to  indicate  a  woman.  These 
faces  are  without  sex;  they  have  brooded 
among  ghosts  of  passions  till  they  have 
become  the  ghosts  of  themselves ;  the 
energy  of  virtue  or  of  sin  has  gone  out  of 
them,  and  they  hang  in  space,  dry,  rattling, 
the  husks  of  desire. 


IV 


Clearly  marked  off  from  these  painters  to 
whom  paint  has  been  no  more  than  a  diffi- 
cult, never  really  loved  or  accepted,  medium 
for  the  translation  of  dreams  or  ideas  into 


62         STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

visible  form,  yet  not  without  some  of  their 
desire  of  the  impossible  in  paint,  Monticelli, 
to  whom  Mr.  MacColl  devotes  a  few,  not  un- 
sympathetic lines,  seems  to  unite  several 
of  the  tendencies  of  modern  painting,  in 
a  contradiction  all  his  own.  I  confess  that 
he  interests  me  more  than  many  better 
painters.  He  tries  to  do  a  thing  wholly  his 
own,  and  is  led  into  one  of  those  confusing 
and  interesting  attempts  to  make  one  form 
of  art  do  the  work  of  another  form  of  art  as 
well  as  its  own,  which  are  so  characteristic 
of  our  century,  and  which  appeal,  with  so 
much  illegitimate  charm,  to  most  speculative 
minds. 

To  Monticelli  colour  is  a  mood ;  or  is  it 
that  he  is  so  much  a  painter  that  mood  to 
him  is  colour  ?  Faust  and  Margaret,  or  a 
woman  feeding  chickens,  or  a  vase  of  flowers 
on  a  table,  or  a  conversation  in  a  park,  or  a 
cottage  interior,  it  is  as  much  the  same  to 
him  as  one  title  or  another  is  the  same  to  a 
musician.  The  mood  of  his  own  soul,  or  the 
fiery  idea  at  the  heart  of  these  mere  reds 
and  greens  and  yellows  :  that  is  his  aim, 
and  the  form  which  offers  itself  to  embody 
that    desire   is    a    somewhat    unimportant 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    63 

accident  to  him.  But  since  form  is  the 
language  in  which  alone  we  can  express 
thought  or  emotion,  so  as  to  be  understood 
in  any  very  positive  or  complete  way,  it  is 
his  error  to  be  inattentive  to  language,  for- 
getting how  little  we  can  express  by  gesture 
and  the  sound  of  the  voice  only. 

But  he  himself,  doubtless,  is  content  with 
the  arabesque  of  the  intention,  with  a  vol- 
uptuous delight  in  daring  harmonies  of 
colour,  as  a  musician  might  be  content  to 
weave  dissonances  into  fantastic  progres- 
sions, in  a  kind  of  very  conscious  madness,  a 
Sadism  of  sound.  Monti celli's  deliohts  are 
all  violent,  and,  in  their  really  abstract 
intoxication  of  the  eyes,  can  be  indicated 
only  in  terms  of  lust  and  cruelty.  Beauty, 
with  him,  is  a  kind  of  torture,  as  if  sensuality 
were  carried  to  the  point  of  a  rejoicing 
agony.  His  colour  cries  out  with  the  pain 
of  an  ecstasy  greater  than  it  can  bear.  A 
weak  and  neurotic  Turner,  seeing  feverishly 
what  Turner  saw  steadily  in  sky  and  sea, 
coupled  with  a  Watteau,  to  whom  courtly 
elegance  and  the  delicate  pathos  of  pleasure 
had  come  to  be  seen  tragically,  sombrely, 
vehemently,    might   perhaps    have   painted 


64        STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

some  of  these  pictures,  or  at  least  thought 
them  in  such  a  manner.  The  painting  itself 
is  like  the  way  of  seeing,  hurried,  fierce, 
prodigal,  the  paint  laid  on  by  the  palette- 
knife  in  great  lumps  which  stand  out  of  the 
canvas.  Looked  at  close,  some  of  these 
pictures  seem  to  be  encrusted  with  uncut 
jewels,  like  the  walls  of  the  Wenzel  Chapel 
in  the  Cathedral  of  Prague.  At  the  proper 
distance,  the  colours  clash  together  in  that 
irreconcilable  way  which  Monticelli  meant, 
crude  tone  against  crude  tone  ;  their  conflict 
is  the  picture. 

In  writing  of  Monticelli  it  is  impossible  not 
to  use  terms  of  hearing  at  least  as  often  as 
terms  of  sight.  All  his  painting  tends 
towards  the  effect  of  music,  with  almost  the 
same  endeavour  to  escape  from  the  bondage  of 
matter ;  which  happens,  however,  to  be  the 
painter's  proper  material,  while  it  is  not  the 
musician's.  Monticelli  is  scarcely  at  all 
dependent  on  what  he  sees,  or  rather  he 
sees  what  he  likes,  and  he  always  likes  the 
same  thing.  He  tries  to  purify  vision  to 
the  point  of  getting  disembodied  colour. 
Other  painters  have  tried  to  give  us  the 
spiritual  aspect   of    colour.      He   seems   to 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    65 

paint  listening.  Confident,  doubtless,  in 
the  symbolism  by  which  a  sound,  a  colour, 
or  an  emotion  may  be  identical,  the  expres- 
sion only  being  different,  not  the  thing 
expressed,  he  hears  colour  upon  a  fiery 
orchestra  of  his  own.  And  some  of  the 
formlessness  of  his  painting  undoubtedly 
comes  from  that  singular  confidence  of  his 
that  the  emotional  expressiveness  of  music, 
together  with  its  apparent  escape  from 
formal  reality,  can  be  transferred  without 
loss  to  the  art  of  painting. 

Does  he  not,  however,  forget  that  music 
is  really  the  most  formal  and  even  fettered  of 
the  arts,  a  kind  of  divine  mathematics,  in 
which  the  figures  on  the  slate  begin  to  sing  ? 
At  one  end  a  dry  science,  at  the  other  an  in- 
spired voice,  music  can  express  emotion  only 
by  its  own  severely  practical  method,  and  is 
no  more  the  bird-like  improvisation  which  it 
is  often  supposed  to  be  than  poetry  is  the 
instinctive  speech  of  emotion  when  it  has 
reached  the  stage  of  words.  On  true  prin- 
ciples of  analogy,  music  corresponds  to  a 
picture  in  which  there  is  first  of  all  very 
careful  drawing.  But  that  is  not  the  way 
in  which  it  is  seen  by  theorists  like  Monti- 

E 


66         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

celli,  whom  we  must  take  as  he  Is  :  a  painter 
who  would  make  pictures  sing,  not  according 
to  the  rules  of  music,  but  according  to  a 
seductive  misinterpretation  of  them. 

The  subjects  of  Monticelli's  pictures  are 
excuses,  and  the  excuse  is  sometimes  almost 
humorous.  He  paints  a  woman  feeding 
chickens,  and  the  incident  is  only  invented 
to  bring  a  large  figure,  so  over-real  as  to  be 
almost  spectral,  against  a  background  of 
blue-black  storm-clouds.  He  paints  a  woman 
washing  clothes,  and,  as  one  looks  at  the 
picture,  one  sees  at  first  only  a  background 
crackling  with  flames,  then  a  streak  of  white 
in  the  foreground,  a  river  seen  for  a  moment 
under  the  shadow  of  that  great  light,  and 
then,  finally,  a  woman  bending  over  the 
water.  He  paints  a  nymph,  and  we  see  a 
coarse  woman  half-naked,  seated  at  the 
foot  of  a  tree,  with  a  dog  at  her  feet.  In 
another  picture  two  dogs  meet  in  a  field, 
and  stare  curiously  and  angrily  at  one 
another.  Sometimes  he  seizes  upon  a  really 
picturesque  moment,  not  neglecting  its  more 
obviously  dramatic  possibilities,  as  in  the 
scene  evoked  from  '  Faust,'  or  the  sober  and 
splendid  '  Adoration  of  the  Magi,'  in  which 


NINETEENTH  CENTURY  PAINTING    67 

the  splendour  of  robes  and  crowns  has  not 
distracted  him  from  the  august  meaning  of 
the  legend.  He  is  fond  of  figures  arrested 
in  the  pause  of  a  dance,  like  the  three 
Algerian  women  in  the  shadow  of  a  doorway, 
or  the  tambourine  dance  in  the  open  space  of 
a  park ;  curiously  fond  also  of  little  naked 
children  and  of  dogs.  His  painting  often 
conveys  the  effect  of  tapestry,  as  in  the 
large  '  Meeting  in  the  Park,'  with  its  colour 
as  if  stitched  into  the  canvas.  His  world  is 
a  kind  of  queer,  bright,  sombre  fairy-land  of 
his  own,  where  fantastic  people  sing  and 
dance  on  the  grass,  and  wander  beside  foun- 
tains, and  lie  under  trees,  always  in  happy 
landscapes  which  some  fierce  thought  has 
turned  tragic ;  the  painter  being  indeed 
indifferent  to  more  than  the  gesture  of  his 
puppets  in  solid  paint,  who  make  so  little 
pretence  to  any  individual  life  of  their  own. 
Their  faces  are  for  the  most  part  indistin- 
guishable ;  all  the  emotion  being  in  the 
colour  of  their  dresses,  in  their  gesture,  and 
in  the  moment's  pattern  which  they  make 
upon  the  green  grass  or  against  ancient 
walls. 

And    Monticelli   has  at   least   this    great 


68         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

quality,  among  others  less  great :  every 
touch  of  his  brush  expresses  a  personal 
vision,  a  way  of  feeling  colour,  and  is  a 
protest  against  that  vague  sort  of  seeing 
everything  in  general  and  feeling  nothing  at 
all,  which  is  supposed  to  be  seeing  things  as 
they  really  are.  Things  as  they  really  are  ! 
that  paradox  for  fools.  For  every  one  pro- 
bably, for  the  artist  certainly,  things  are  as 
one  sees  them  ;  and  if  most  people  seem  to 
see  things  in  very  much  the  same  way,  that 
is  only  another  proof  of  the  small  amount  of 
individuality  in  the  average  man,  his  deplor- 
able faculty  of  imitation,  his  inability  not 
only  to  think  but  to  see  for  himself.  Monti- 
celli  creates  with  his  eyes,  putting  his  own 
symbols  frankly  in  the  place  of  nature's  ;  for 
that,  perhaps,  is  what  it  means  to  see  nature 
in  a  personal  way. 

1903,  1905. 


GUSTAVE   MOREAU 


GUSTAVE  MOREAU 


In  two  pictures  of  Chasseriau  in  the  Louvre 
we  see  the  origin  of  both  Gustavo  Moreau 
and  Puvis  de  Chavannes.  'La  Chaste 
Suzanne'  does  what  Moreau  tries  to  do, 
with  a  certain  artificial  but  attractive  grace ; 
the  conception  much  more  pictorial,  the 
drawing  much  more  sensitive.  The  colours 
are  a  little  faint,  dry  even,  but  this  slender, 
romantic  figure  in  a  romantic  landscape 
makes  a  picture.  In  the  fresco  which  hangs 
beside  the  Botticellis  on  the  staircase,  there 
is  the  suggestion  of  a  fine  decoration,  antici- 
pating Puvis.  Both  followers  went  further, 
each  on  his  own  way,  than  Chasseriau,  and 
have  eclipsed  his  fame ;  and  for  the  most 
part  those  who  accept  Puvis  reject  Moreau, 
and  those  who  exalt  Moreau,  like  Huys- 
mans  (to  whom  he  owes  the  wider  part  of 

71 


72         STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

of  his  reputation),  can  seem  to  themselves 
to  have  said  all  when  they  have  said  scorn- 
fully :  '  Comparer  M.  Puvis  et  M.  Gustave 
Moreau,  les  marier,  alors  qu'il  s'agit  de 
raffinement,  les  confondre  en  une  botte 
d'admiration  unique,  c'est  commettre  vrai- 
ment  une  des  plus  obsequieuses  heresies 
qui  se  puissent  voir.'  With  which  it  is 
possible  to  agree,  in  a  sense  not  Huysmans'. 
The  art-critism  of  Huysmans  is  remark- 
able as  literature,  and  it  is  Huysmans  who 
was  one  of  the  first  to  fight  on  behalf  of 
Degas,  of  Forain,  of  the  impressionists. 
But,  just  as  he  has  written  a  book  on  the 
cathedral  of  Chartres,  and  Rodin  can  say  of 
it,  '  One  does  not  get  much  benefit  by  read- 
ing it';  just  as  he  has  written  of  religion 
without  convincing  most  Catholics  that  he 
is  really  a  sincere  Catholic ;  just  as  he  has 
written  elaborately  about  plain-song  with- 
out making  it  clear  that  he  understands 
music ;  so,  in  his  eloquent  and  picturesque 
writing  about  pictures,  it  is  rarely  from  the 
painter's  point  of  view  that  he  approaches 
them.  In  the  first  edition  of  '  Certains ' 
there  was  an  essay  on  a  picture  in  the 
Louvre,  a  '  Virgin  and   Saints '  of  Bianchi, 


GUSTAVE   MOREAU  73 

a  mediocre  picture,  which  seems  to  have 
interested  him  solely  because,  as  he  says, 
'de  cette  toile  s'exhalent  pour  moi  des 
emanations  delicieuses,  des  captations  do- 
lentes,  d'insidieux  sacrileges,  des  pri^res 
troubles.'  In  an  essay  on  Felicien  Rops, 
finer  as  literature  than  any  of  the  designs 
about  which  he  writes,  he  overlooks  all  that 
is  cold,  trivial,  and  mechanical  in  this 
'  diabolic '  art,  in  his  delight  in  its  homage 
and  learned  eulogy  of  evil.  He  writes  of 
Odilon  Redon  as  one  would  hardly  be 
justified  in  writing  of  Blake ;  and,  finally, 
seems  to  find  in  Gustave  Moreau  the  painter 
of  all  others  best  suited  to  evoke  his  own 
eloquence,  a  painter  at  last  really  palpable, 
a  mine  of  literature,  and  he  has  praised  his 
'  Salome '  with  this  elaborate  splendour  : 

'  A  throne,  like  the  high  altar  of  a 
cathedral,  rose  beneath  innumerable  arches 
springing  from  columns,  thick- set  as  Roman 
pillars,  enamelled  with  vari-coloured  bricks, 
set  with  mosaics,  incrusted  with  lapis  lazuli 
and  sardonyx,  in  a  palace  like  the  basilica 
of  an  architecture  at  once  Mussulman  and 
Byzantine.  In  the  centre  of  the  tabernacle 
surmounting  the  altar,  fronted  with  rows  of 


74         STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

circular  steps,  sat  the  Tetrarch  Herod,  the 
tiara  on  his  head,  his  legs  pressed  together, 
his  hands  on  his  knees.  His  face  was 
yellow,  parchment  -  like,  annulated  with 
wrinkles,  withered  with  age ;  his  long  beard 
floated  like  a  cloud  on  the  jewelled  stars  that 
constellated  the  robe  of  netted  gold  across 
his  breast.  Around  this  statue,  motionless, 
frozen  in  the  sacred  pose  of  a  Hindu  god, 
perfumes  burned,  throwing  out  clouds  of 
vapour,  pierced,  as  by  the  phosphorescent 
eyes  of  animals,  by  the  fire  of  precious  stones 
set  in  the  sides  of  the  throne ;  then  the 
vapour  mounted,  unrolling  itself  beneath 
arches  where  the  blue  smoke  mingled  with 
the  powdered  gold  of  great  sunrays,  fallen 
from  the  domes. 

'  In  the  perverse  odour  of  perfumes,  in 
the  over-heated  atmosphere  of  this  church, 
Salome,  her  left  arm  extended  in  a  gesture 
of  command,  her  bent  right  arm  holding  on 
the  level  of  the  face  a  great  lotus,  advances 
slowly  to  the  sound  of  a  guitar,  thrummed 
by  a  woman  who  crouches  on  the  floor. 

'With  collected,  solemn,  almost  august 
countenance,  she  begins  the  lascivious  dance 
that   should   waken   the  sleeping  senses  of 


GUSTAVE  MOREAU  76 

the  aged  Herod ;  her  breasts  undulate, 
become  rigid  at  the  contact  of  the  whirling 
necklets ;  diamonds  sparkle  on  the  dead 
whiteness  of  her  skin,  her  bracelets,  girdles, 
rings,  shoot  sparks ;  on  her  triumphal  robe, 
sewn  with  pearls,  flowered  with  silver, 
sheeted  with  gold,  the  jewelled  breast-plate, 
whose  every  stitch  is  a  precious  stone,  bursts 
into  flame,  scatters  in  snakes  of  fire,  swarms 
on  the  ivory  -  toned,  tea  -  rose  flesh,  like 
splendid  insects  with  dazzling  wings,  marbled 
with  carmine,  dotted  with  morning  gold, 
diapered  with  steel  -  blue,  streaked  with 
peacock-green. 

*  In  the  work  of  Gustave  Moreau,  con- 
ceived on  no  scriptural  data,  des  Esseintes 
saw  at  last  the  realisation  of  the  strange, 
superhuman  Salome  that  he  had  dreamed. 
She  was  no  more  the  mere  dancing-girl 
who,  with  the  corrupt  torsion  of  her  limbs, 
tears  a  cry  of  desire  from  an  old  man  ;  who, 
with  her  eddying  breasts,  her  palpitating 
body,  her  quivering  thighs,  breaks  the 
energy,  melts  the  will,  of  a  king ;  she  has 
become  the  symbolic  deity  of  indestructible 
Lust,    the   goddess   of  immortal   Hysteria, 


76         STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

the  accursed  Beauty,  chosen  among  many 
by  the  catalepsy  that  has  stiffened  her 
limbs,  that  has  hardened  her  muscles;  the 
monstrous,  indifferent,  irresponsible,  insen- 
sible Beast,  poisoning,  like  Helen  of  old,  all 
that  go  near  her,  all  that  look  upon  her,  all 
that  she  touches.' 

In  these  pages  of  '  A  Rebours  '  the  art  of 
Moreau  culminates,  achieves  itself,  passes 
into  literature. 


n 

Gustave  Moreau  is  haunted  by  the  image 
of  Salome,  and  he  paints  her  a  hundred 
times,  always  a  rigid  flower  of  evil,  always 
in  the  midst  of  sumptuous  glooms  or  barbaric 
splendours  :  a  mosque,  a  cathedral,  a  Hindu 
temple,  an  architecture  of  dreams.  She  is 
not  a  woman,  but  a  gesture,  a  symbol  of 
delirium ;  a  fixed  dream  transforms  itself 
into  cruel  and  troubling  hallucinations  of 
colour  ;  strange  vaults  arch  over  her,  dim 
and  glimmering,  pierced  by  shafts  of  light, 
starting  into  blood -red  splendours,  through 
which  she  moves  robed  in  flowers  or  jewels, 
with   a   hieratic  lasciviousness.      A  sketch 


GUSTAVE  MOREAU  77 

(painted,  almost  carved,  on  wood)  shows 
her  swathed  in  savage  fripperies,  advancing 
on  the  tips  of  her  toes,  her  feet  and  ankles 
tattooed  with  jewels,  holding  the  lotus  in  her 
right  hand,  her  head  crowned  by  a  tiara ; 
cloths,  ribbons,  all  sorts  of  coloured  streamers, 
swing  heavily  about  her,  heavy  as  lead,  the 
image  of  an  idol.  He  sees  her  always  with 
flames,  flowers,  and  blood  about  her. 

And  he  is  haunted  by  other  tragic  women : 
Delilah,  Judith,  Messalina,  Cleopatra,  Helen 
on  the  walls  of  Troy ;  he  sees  even  Bath- 
sheba  tragically.  Unachieved  as  pictures, 
coming  into  existence  through  all  manner 
of  borrowings,  they  remain  graven  images 
of  the  spectral  women  that  haunt  the  brain 
of  the  student,  Helen  becomes  an  image 
of  stone  or  salt,  greenish-white  against  stone 
pillars  and  a  sky  with  white  stars  ;  the  face 
blotted  out,  a  spectre  seen  by  the  brain  with 
shut  eyes.  He  paints  Cleopatra,  and  you 
see  an  explosion  of  fierce  colour,  a  decor,  and 
then,  vaguely,  a  mere  attitude,  the  woman. 
He  paints  Francesca  da  Kimini,  and  you  see 
an  immense  room,  with  a  black  window 
at  the  back,  menacing  with  light ;  then, 
gradually,  a  red  spot  huddled  in  a  corner, 


78         STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

which  is  Francesca.  It  is  the  theatre  of 
life  which  interests  him,  not  Hfe,  and  not 
nature :  an  architecture  of  the  brain,  an 
atmosphere  called  up  out  of  unrealised 
space. 

Moreau  is  the  mathematician  of  the 
fantastic,  a  calculating  visionary.  In  his 
portrait  of  himself  one  sees  a  sickly  dreamer, 
hesitating  before  his  own  dreams.  His 
effects  are  combined  mentally,  as  by  a 
voluptuary  who  is  without  passion.  His 
painting  is  sexless  and  yearning,  and  renders 
the  legends  of  sex  with  a  kind  of  impotent 
allurement.  Leda  and  the  swan  recur  as  a 
motive,  but  in  the  rendering  of  that  intense 
motive  there  is  no  more  than  decorative 
toying,  within  landscapes  crackling  with 
ineffectual  fire.  Sometimes  colour  is  sought, 
sometimes  line;  never  the  kernel  and  passion 
of  the  story.  And  it  is  the  same  with  Helen, 
Bathsheba,  Messalina,  Eve  and  the  Serpent, 
and  the  eternal  Salome ;  always  the  same 
strengthless  perversity,  fumbling  in  vain 
about  the  skirts  of  evil,  of  beauty,  and  of 
mystery.  What  he  tries  to  suggest  he  has 
not  realised ;  what  he  realises  he  has  not 
seen  ;  his  emotion  is  never  fundamental,  but 


GUSTAVE   MOREAU  79 

cerebral ;  and  it  is  only  when  he  shuts  it 
wholly  within  his  colour,  and  forces  his 
colour  for  once  to  obey  his  emotion  (as  in 
a  little  '  Magdalen  on  Calvary,'  with  the 
three  crosses  black  against  hills  corroded 
out  of  sunsets),  that  he  is  able  to  produce  a 
single  imaginative  effect,  that  he  is  able  to 
please  the  eye  by  more  than  some  square 
or  corner  of  jewelled  surface  into  which  life 
comes  surreptitiously. 

Moreau,  I  have  heard  Rodin  say,  was  a 
man  of  science,  a  great  combiner,  one  of  a 
generation  which  was  taught  to  study  art  in 
the  galleries,  and  not  from  nature.  Out  of 
this  art  life  is  rigorously  excluded.  His 
figures,  prettified  from  the  antique,  are  un- 
interesting and  express  nothing ;  interest 
comes  into  the  picture  from  the  surroundings, 
and  in  the  wake  of  the  title.  His  landscapes 
are  made  of  rocks,  trees,  water,  hills,  and 
chasms,  neither  drawn  nor  coloured  after 
nature,  nor  composed  on  any  of  nature's 
plans.  His  light  is  neither  that  of  the  sun 
nor  of  the  moon,  but  a  light  imagined  in  a 
studio,  and  fitted  into  the  pattern  of  a 
design.  And  this  artificial  world  is  peopled 
with  reminiscences.     He  does  not  even  choose 


80         STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

among  schools  or  among  ages ;  but  will  be 
Greek  or  Hindu  indifferently,  and  with  an 
equal  incapacity  for  reflecting  any  faithful 
image.  He  seems  to  look  through  coloured 
glasses,  and  when  I  stand  before  his  pictures 
I  am  reminded  of  those  travellers  who,  when 
they  cross  the  sea,  put  on  red  spectacles  that 
they  may  not  see  the  moving  waves  as  they 
are,  but  after  some  unnatural  and  com- 
forting compromise  of  their  own. 

Moreau  has  this  in  common  with  all 
visionary  artists,  that  he  sees  in  nature  only 
what  he  brings  into  it.  But  is  it  really 
vision  which  he  brings,  and  under  what 
imaginative  light  has  he  seen  these  feeble 
shapes  and  arbitrary  brilliances  ?  Are  they 
not  laboriously  sought  out,  made  to  order, 
in  a  sense,  not  even  records  of  a  fever  or  of 
a  delirium  (as  in  the  vast  and  violent 
canvases  of  Henry  de  Groux),  but  pains- 
taking fantasies,  the  rendering  of  moods  in 
which  all  the  excitement  has  come  mechani- 
cally, by  the  mere  '  will  to  dream '  ? 

When  Blake  fails,  it  is  the  failure  to 
translate  a  thing  seen  into  a  visible  thing. 
Moreau's  failure  is  not  that  of  a  vision 
unachieved,  but  of  a  plan  imperfectly  carried 


GUSTAVE  MOREAU  81 

out.  Geometry  breaks  down,  a  bit  of  the 
mosaic  has  been  wrongly  placed  ;  patience  or 
skill  has  given  out  before  the  end  is  reached. 
When  he  paints  in  pattern,  as  in  the  Chinese 
architecture  of  his  '  Chimeres,'  I  cannot  feel 
that  he  really  sees  in  pattern,  but  that  he 
has  worked  it  out  by  a  kind  of  dovetailing, 
square  inch  by  square  inch.  He  says,  I  will 
paint  Venice  in  a  svmbol ;  and  he  sets 
towers  and  domes  against  the  sky,  and  fills 
the  foreground  with  a  nude  figure,  clay- 
coloured  and  with  folded  wings,  lying  at  full 
length  among  inexplicable  bushes.  He  paints 
a  '  Fee  aux  Griffons,'  and  it  is  a  Bouguereau 
transposed  into  the  terms  of  enamel.  He 
takes  a  subject  of  Blake,  and  paints  '  Christ 
in  the  Garden  of  Olives,'  with  a  similar 
flame-winged  angel  in  downward  flight.  But 
even  here  the  Parisian  ideal  of  prettiness 
cannot  be  driven  out  of  his  head,  nor  the 
Paris  art-student's  timid  correctness  out  of 
his  hand.  Beauty,  to  him,  is  bounded  on 
the  one  side  by  prettiness,  on  the  other  by 
the  fantastic  and  the  unnatural.  At  a  touch 
of  nature  his  whole  world  of  cold  excitement 
would  drop  to  pieces,  scatter  into  coloured 
fragments  of  broken  glass. 

F 


82         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

The  world  of  Moreau  is  made  of  coloured 
glass  and  jewels.  His  colour  is  always  start- 
ling, sometimes  intense;  like  his  whole  work, 
it  aims  at  effect,  and  it  is  that  portion  of  his 
work  which  most  often  or  most  nearly 
succeeds.  He  encrusts  his  canvases  with 
gesso,  with  metal,  and  with  glass.  In  the 
Palazzo  Martinengo  at  Brescia  there  is  a 
quaint  picture  of  '  St.  George  and  the 
Dragon,'  attributed  to  Giovanni  Donato 
Mont'  Orfano,  which  is  like  an  anticipation 
of  this  part  of  Moreau.  The  armour  is  of 
actual  steel  and  iron,  the  lance  of  iron, 
and  pointed  with  steel ;  there  are  brass 
and  steel  knobs  and  nails  and  circlets  on 
the  horse's  harness.  Thus,  in  Moreau's 
•  Fleur  Mystique '  there  is  a  design  built 
up  like  Le  Puy,  with  rocks  and  halos  and 
jewelled  crowns  and  tiaras  and  petals  of  tin 
and  stems  of  coloured  glass.  But  with 
Moreau  nothing  is  painted  for  its  own  sake, 
but  for  the  sake  of  some  enigmatical  trans- 
formation. He  paints  a  tea-rose,  and  the 
flower  petrifies,  turns  into  a  jewel.  The 
cactus,  which  should  be  his  favourite  flower, 
becomes  a  menace  of  rosy  flame  ;  but  he 
tries  to  make  the  leaves  mysterious,  not  by 


GUSTAVE   MOREAU  83 

painting  them  as  they  are,  and  thus  loses 
much,  softening  what  is  sharply  artificial 
and  unreal  in  the  actual  thing.  He  is  at  his 
best,  nearest  to  imagination,  when  he  sees 
almost  nothing  but  colour,  setting  mass  to 
cry  against  mass.  Thus  it  is  only  in  his 
small  compositions,  his  sketches,  that  he 
makes  any  genuine  appeal  as  a  painter.  In 
the  '  Grande  Salle '  of  what  was  once  his 
house,  and  is  now  the  '  Musee  Moreau,'  he 
has  let  in  daylight  on  vast  canvases,  and 
that  light  shows  us  all  that  is  threadbare 
in  them,  their  cold  frenzies,  their  gaudy 
commonness.  In  the  small,  bright,  sombre 
things,  in  the  lower  rooms,  there  is  the 
effect,  strange,  disconcerting,  attractive,  of 
a  kind  of  transposition  of  whole  picture- 
galleries  of  pictures.  All  are  translated 
into  another  language,  in  which  they  speak 
with  a  fascinating  foreign  accent. 


Ill 

In  one  of  the  rooms  of  the  Musee  Moreau 
there  is  a  copy  of  Carpaccio's  *  St.  George 
and  the  Dragon,'  and  by  its  presence  there 
it  seems  to  make  criticism  easier.     By  the 


84         STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

side  of  what  is  youthful  and  naive  in  Car- 
paccio's  realising  imagination,  all  these 
laboured  inventions  seem  to  drop  away  into 
some  sick  region  of  no-man's  land,  where  an 
art  of  spectacular  illusion  sets  a  tragic  ballet, 
tragic  and  Parisian,  posturing  uncertainly 
across  the  footlights  of  picture-frames.  A 
note  which  I  deciphered  on  the  margin  of 
one  of  the  drawings  indicates  enough  of 
the  aim  :  '  Orphee  mourant,  toute  la  Nature 
en  pleurs,  tons  les  animaux  —  les  satyrs, 
les  faunes,  les  centaures,  etc.,  toutes  les  cre- 
atures des  poetes — dans  des  mouvements  de 
desespoir.  Nature  en  deuil.'  The  stealthy 
snarer  is  seen  setting  his  traps  for  attitudes. 
It  is  not  in  this  way,  from  the  outside, 
that  great  art,  above  all  great  visionary  art,  is 
made.  There  is  equal  need  of  '  fundamental 
brain-work'  in  a  picture  and  in  a  poem,  if 
either  is  to  be  properly  imaginative.  All 
Moreau's  pictures  are  illustrations  of  legend  ; 
it  is  only  rarely,  as  in  the  eternal  Salome, 
that  they  create  a  new,  personal  form  for 
legend,  and  even  Salome  is  for  the  most 
part  seen  meagrely,  a  costumed  doll,  to 
whom  Huysmans  must  add  meaning  as  he 
adds  a  rarer  colour.     At  times  the  painter 


GUSTAVE   MOREAU  86 

can  produce  an  effect  of  actual  hallucination, 
but  the  effect  is  superposed  upon  a  purely 
academic  groundwork ;  his  drawings  are  all 
of  studied  poses,  carefully  and  unsensitively 
copied ;  colour  is  called  in  to  give  heat  and 
singularity  to  a  structure  at  once  cold  and 
commonplace. 

When  Moreau  is  at  his  best,  when  his 
colour  is  almost  a  disguise,  and  the  conven- 
tional drawing,  the  doll-like  figures,  the 
forced  emphasis,  the  prettiness,  are  buried 
out  of  sight  under  clots  of  paint,  out  of 
which  the  sunlight  sucks  a  fierce  brilliance, 
there  are  moments  when  it  is  possible  to 
compare  him  with  Degas,  the  painter  of 
modern  things,  whose  work  is  to  be  seen 
not  far  off  on  the  walls  of  the  Luxembourg. 
What  Moreau  does  with  colour  combined 
with  outside  reality.  Degas  does,  and  more 
discreetly,  with  colour  caught  in  real  things  : 
a  hanging  on  the  wall,  a  carpet  under  the 
feet,  a  frame  of  theatrical  scenery,  which 
becomes  a  vision  as  he  looks  at  it,  and  the 
equivalent  of  imagination.  And  in  Degas 
the  beauty  is  a  part  of  truth,  a  beauty 
which  our  eyes  are  too  jaded  to  distinguish 
in  the  things  about  us.     Degas  finds  in  real 


86        STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

things,  seen  at  the  right  moment,  all  the 
flames  and  all  the  jewels  of  Moreau.  And 
thus,  in  his  acceptance  of  reality,  he  has 
created  a  new  and  vital  form  of  art ;  while 
Moreau,  in  his  rejection  of  time  and  space, 
has  but  combined  pictures  out  of  other 
pictures.  His  art  was  sterile  from  the  first, 
and  but  repeats  the  ineffectual  spells  of  a 
solitary  magician.  But  at  least  he  lived  his 
own  life,  among  his  chosen  spectres. 

1906. 


WATTS 


WATTS 


All  his  life  Watts  was  a  seeker,  and  at 
eighty-three,  in  a  landscape  exhibited  at  the 
New  Gallery,  he  is  still  seeking,  and  has 
indeed  found  a  rare,  new  kind  of  perfection, 
landscape  so  delicately  felt  that  it  seems  to 
exist  as  if  nature  had  never  been  painted 
before.  In  his  earliest  work  he  is  coldly, 
almost  unintelligently,  academic ;  a  half- 
draped  figure  in  his  studio  stands  there 
insultingly  soulless,  among  these  pictures 
into  which  all  the  exaltations  of  the  spirit 
have  passed,  like  a  flame,  a  cloud,  or  a  mist, 
glorifying  the  body  of  material  things. 
Gradually  intention  enters  into  form,  not 
yet  filling  it.  A  figure  of  Satan  indicates 
the  malevolent  pride  of  the  intellect,  in  the 
poise  and  gesture  of  a  body  only  partly  alive 
and  but  slightly  touched  with  beauty.     A 

89 


90         STUDIES  IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

nude  figure,  awkwardly  drawn,  and  set  in 
the  midst  of  a  landscape  whose  very  ugliness 
is  a  kind  of  promise,  shows  us  another  search 
in  another  direction.  A  group,  harshly 
drawn  and  crudely  coloured,  contains  one 
figure  bent  over  upon  itself,  in  a  curve  after- 
wards to  be  subtilised  into  the  bowed  and 
unwearied  tenderness  of  '  Hope.'  The  pain- 
ful earnestness  of  portraits  fixes  us  with  an 
almost  audacious  confidence  in  the  power  of 
intention,  its  power  over  an  immature 
technique  and  over  a  rebellious  sitter,  un- 
willing to  render  up  a  secret.  One  portrait, 
hard  in  outline  as  Manet,  anticipates  crudely 
some  of  the  after  effects  of  colour,  and  gazes 
into  our  eyes  with  a  triumphant  sensuality 
of  soul,  implacable,  amiable,  interrogatory. 
Thoughtfulness  comes  slowly  into  these 
faces,  as  the  soul  of  the  painter  trains  his 
hand  to  finer  uses.  At  first  a  blank,  then 
an  animal  intelligence,  then  will,  then  the 
desire  of  beauty,  or  knowledge,  or  power, 
then  the  consciousness  of  self,  then  person- 
ality unconscious  even  of  its  own  presence, 
then  the  passion  of  an  idea,  into  which  the 
whole  man  passes,  more  visibly  than  in  life 
(as  in  the  portrait  of  Joachim),  or  the  soul 


WATTS  91 

itself,  flattering  a  faint  body  as  a  flame  is 
fluttered  by  the  wind  (as  in  the  portrait  of 
Swinburne),  the  portraits  grow  before  us, 
building  up  man  out  of  dust  and  breath,  as 
in  the  first  creation.  And  always  hand  and 
soul  move  forward  together.  As  intention 
comes  into  the  work,  the  work  becomes 
firmer ;  as  the  power  of  expression  increases, 
the  power  of  conception  increases  with  it. 
And  it  is  not  merely  a  personality  becoming 
more  and  more  able  to  find  its  own  words  for 
its  own  thoughts :  it  is  a  great  pictorial 
intelligence  mastering  secret  after  secret  of 
the  world's  beauty,  of  the  beauty  of  the  body 
and  the  soul  of  man,  of  the  beauty  of  every 
symbol  by  which  any  divinity  can  be  made 
visible. 

More  than  most  painters,  most  at  least  of 
those  painters  who  have  the  genuine  pictorial 
sense,  Watts's  quality  of  vision  is  conditioned 
by  a  moral  quality  of  mind.  He  sees  nobly, 
he  sees  tenderly,  he  sees  disinterestedly. 
There  is  a  little  picture  of  the  head  of  a 
donkey,  full  of  a  perfectly  simple  feeling 
for  a  despised  animal  taken  for  once  frankly 
on  its  own  merits,  without  disdain  and 
without  dishonouring  pity,  which  seems  to 


92         STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

me  to  indicate  with  great  clearness  the 
peculiarly  honest  quality  of  his  imagination. 
I  do  not  always  feel  that  in  every  one  of  his 
allegories  he  is  quite  sure  of  the  limits  of 
pictorial  expression,  that  he  surrenders  him- 
self quite  fully  to  the  thing  seen,  without 
undue  confidence  in  the  meaning  behind  it. 
But  the  mind  which  sees  visible  things  as 
the  symbols  or  messengers  of  moral  ideas  has 
conceived  a  whole  world  upon  canvas  in  which 
there  is  not  a  mean  or  trivial  corner.  He 
paints  nakedness  with  the  strenuous  and 
manly  purity  of  one  to  whom  the  body  is 
the  divinest  thing  in  the  world,  and  he 
paints  the  faces  of  men  with  the  passionate 
and  interpreting  and  surrendering  intuition 
of  one  to  whom  the  soul  is  the  divinest  part 
of  the  body.  His  landscape  is  that  of  one 
for  whom  the  finger  of  God  is  continually 
creating  the  earth  over  again,  day  by  day, 
at  sunrise,  at  twilight,  and  at  sunset.  A 
great  joy  breaks  out  of  all  his  work,  as  if  the 
face  of  man  and  the  body  of  woman,  and 
the  form  and  colour  of  the  earth  and  sky, 
were  not  so  much  the  slaves  and  recipients 
of  light,  waiting  for  the  moment  in  which 
they    should    become    worthy   of    art,   but 


WATTS  93 

themselves  radiated  lio^ht  out  of  their  own 
substance,  and  art  were  rather  a  waiting 
upon  the  moment  in  which  it  should  appre- 
hend something  which  was  already  there  all 
the  while. 

And  so  it  is  that  the  portraits,  always  so 
beautiful  as  pictures,  seem  always  to  show 
an  understanding  of  the  people  who  have 
sat  for  them,  more,  probably,  than  the 
people  themselves  have  ever  had.  It  is  not 
character  merely,  or  merely  a  choice  from 
among  emotions,  as  one  emotion  comes 
interestingly  into  a  face,  or  the  gesture 
which  renders  the  outward  man  so  that  we 
may  recognise  him  in  the  street ;  it  is  a 
brooding  unconsciousness,  coming  up  into 
the  eyes  and  fixed  there  in  all  its  restless- 
ness ;  the  inner  mystery  itself,  not  the 
explaining  away  of  that  mystery  ;  the  ulti- 
mate dumbness  of  the  soul,  as  trivial  things 
drop  away  from  it,  and  it  stands  lonely, 
questioning,  unfathomably  secret.  For 
every  soul  has  its  own  way  of  being  silent, 
of  looking  into  the  darkness  at  the  end  of 
the  long  avenue,  of  knowing  how  little  it 
can  ever  know,  and  how  much  of  wisdom 
lies  in  that  very  acquiescence.     It  is  that 


94         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

moment  which  Watts  chooses  out  of  all  the 
moments,  and  it  is  in  his  choice  that  he  is 
most  sharply  distinguished  from  most  other 
fine  or  powerful  modern  painters,  to  whom  the 
accident  of  life  has  for  the  most  part  been 
everything.  Whistler,  with  his  unerring 
'  science  of  beauty,'  his  unerring  sense  of 
the  painter's  opportunity,  poises  his  figures 
on  the  turn  of  a  heel,  in  the  act  of  buttoning 
a  long  glove,  the  hand  resting  jauntily  upon 
the  cane,  the  child's  feet  grasping  the  floor, 
the  aged  man  or  woman  outlined  against  a 
dim  grey  wall  with  the  immobility  of  the 
wall  itself  Sargent  pours  the  crude  light  of 
the  studio  roof  upon  all  in  a  man  that  would 
most  escape  that  interrogation,  crying  to 
him  roughly  to  speak  out,  stripping  ofi*  some 
of  his  shyest  and  most  honest  disguises,  and 
giving  us,  as  the  truth,  whatever  remains 
over  after  the  soul  has  been  frightened  out 
of  sight.  Manet  is  not  more  tender,  but  he 
is  more  complete  in  his  capture,  giving  us 
life,  as  well  as  the  moment,  and  the  whole 
sensitive  intelligence  of  the  flesh,  which  to 
him  is  the  whole  of  life.  All  these  will 
have  things  their  own  way,  will  snatch  the 
beauty  or   the   energy   which   they  desire, 


WATTS  95 

like  a  thing  possessed  wilfully ;  only  Watts 
is  content  to  wait,  disinterested,  humble, 
incurious,  sure  that  the  secret,  if  not 
the  meaning  of  the  secret,  will  come  to 
him. 

And  it  is  in  the  same  way  that  he  appre- 
hends other  secrets.  In  the  beginning  his  line 
was  careful,  by  no  means  sensitive,  his  colour 
harsh.  Line  came  to  him  when  he  begfan 
to  see  form  as  beauty's  outline,  colour  when 
he  began  to  see  colour  as  the  vesture  of 
beauty.  In  an  intermediate  stage,  which 
has  its  interest,  he  painted  pictures  which 
have  something  in  common  with  the  early 
work  of  Millais  (certainly  not  their  tech- 
nique) almost  pre-Raphaelite  pictures,  in 
which  there  is  a  frank  and  drily  pictorial 
acceptance  of  the  accidents,  not  necessarily 
beautiful,  of  modern  life.  These  careful 
pictures  lead,  through  many  stages,  to 
scenes  and  figures  out  of  the  Bible,  or  the 
romances  of  chivalry,  and  these  to  the  more 
truly  imaginative  pictures  in  which  legend 
or  history  is  excuse  for  an  attitude  or  an 
idea,  and  finally  symbol  becomes  embodied 
in  almost  an  abstract  way.  Cain  or  Eve, 
Psyche  or  the  Angel  of  Pity,  these  figures 


96         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

have  at  once  the  excellence  of  humanity  and 
an  evident  meaning  beyond  their  mere  pre- 
sentment of  themselves,  which  deepens  into 
a  kind  of  mental  or  emotional  backofround. 
The  Psyche  in  the  Tate  Gallery  is  one  of  the 
loveliest  nude  figures  ever  painted,  and  it 
reveals  depth  within  depth  of  delight, 
subtlety  within  subtlety,  instead  of  stand- 
ing there,  mere  beautiful  flesh,  like  the 
Leighton  on  the  other  side  of  the  wall.  In 
the  shrinking  tenderness  of  the  line  which 
caresses  the  drooping  figure,  in  the  pearl- 
white  satin  of  the  flesh,  in  the  fall  of  the 
arms  and  hands,  the  bend  of  the  head,  there 
is  a  symbol  made  perfect  in  humanity,  the 
symbol  of  the  awakening  to  love,  the  soul 
becoming  conscious  of  the  body,  the  body 
becoming  conscious  of  the  soul,  as  soul  and 
body  see  love  for  the  first  time.  Eve,  in 
her  creation  and  her  transgression,  a  figure 
of  opulent  and  barbaric  vehemence,  flowers 
up  among  a  tumult  of  blossoms,  as  if  the 
spirit  of  the  earth  had  taken  a  new  form, 
more  wonderful  than  the  form  and  colour  of 
the  flowers.  Where  Love  and  Life  meet, 
where  Love  and  Death  meet,  the  great 
abstract    tragedy    becomes    at    once    more 


WATTS  97 

abstract  and  more  human,  as  these  passions 
clothed  with  deUcate  bodies,  made  out  of  a 
life  which  is  our  life,  and  yet  finer,  more 
subtle,  more  spiritualised,  than  earthly  flesh, 
pause  on  the  first  and  last  threshold  and 
exchange  the  eternal  salutation.  And  here, 
whenever  he  is  fully  himself,  himself  at  his 
best,  there  is  no  conflict  between  form  and 
meaning,  the  symbol  is  more  than  allegory, 
the  picture  is  more  than  a  painted  poem. 

It  has  often  been  said,  both  in  praise  and 
in  blame,  that  Watts  is  a  poet  rather  than  a 
painter,  that  he  has  a  literary,  not  a  pictorial, 
meaning  to  convey,  and  that  he  is  to  be 
judged  for  his  intentions  rather  than  for 
what  he  has  actually  done  in  paint.  So  far 
as  this  is  true,  it  is  the  severest  condemna- 
tion which  could  be  passed  upon  the  work 
of  a  painter,  and  it  is  not  without  truth,  but 
only  a  measure  of  truth.  False  symbolism, 
symbolism  which  is  false  if  only  because  it 
is  obvious,  and  because  its  meaning  can  be 
detached  entirely  from  the  manner  of  its 
expression,  so  that  the  beauty  and  skill  of 
the  picture  neither  add  to  nor  take  from  its 
significance,  is  seen  very  clearly  in  a  com- 
paratively early   picture    in   the   studio,   in 

G 


98         STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

which  a  knight  follows  after  the  bubble 
reputation  to  the  edge  of  a  precipice,  over 
which  his  horse  heedlessly  shoulders  an  old 
man,  as  he  himself  plunges  forward  into  the 
depths.  The  bubble  is  there,  flying  before, 
and  behind  are  brother  and  wife  and  child, 
abandoned,  and  watching  the  inevitable. 
Here,  as  in  some  of  the  much  later  pictures, 
('  Mammon,'  for  instance,  and  '  The  Spirit  of 
the  Churches'),  the  idea  is  not  implicit  in 
the  lines  of  the  composition,  it  is  a  thing 
super-added,  like  a  trinket  or  a  fetter.  In 
the  two  extraordinary  pictures  called  '  The 
All-Pervading'  and  'The  Dweller  in  the 
Innermost,'  mesmeric  dolls,  like  figures 
drawn  by  a  medium  in  a  state  of  trance, 
too  faithful  to  what  seems  to  be  actually 
seen  to  be  able  to  create  an  image  of  unseen 
things  in  a  form  intelligible  to  ordinary 
sight,  there  is  a  complete  abandonment  to 
the  fallacy  of  vision,  which  leaves  us  with 
coloured  vacancy,  neither  beautiful  to  the 
eyes  nor  satisfying  to  the  intelligence.  But 
in  such  pictures  as  '  Hope,'  as  *  Love  and 
Life,'  and  as  '  Love  and  Death,'  as  in  such 
simpler  single  figures  as  Psyche  and  the 
Eves,    it   is    the  picture    that    makes    the 


WATTS  99 

meaning,  and  not  the  meaning  that  makes 
the  picture.  The  Psyche  is  so  expressive 
because  it  is  so  lovely,  and  because  it  could 
tell  us  all  that  we  really  need  to  know  about 
it  if  we  knew  nothing  of  the  story  after 
which  it  is  named,  but  looked  into  it  as  into 
a  divine  mirror,  reflecting  to  us  something  of 
the  shape  of  our  own  souls.  Those  symboli- 
cal figures  are  conceived  first  of  all  as  pic- 
tures, or  rather  the  picture  and  the  meaning 
of  the  picture  have  grown  up  under  the 
brush  together.  There,  indeed,  in  that  dif- 
ference between  symbol  and  allegory,  lies 
all  the  difference  between  what  belongs  to 
the  art  of  painting  and  what  exists  outside 
it,  properly  outcast. 

In  every  fine  picture  of  Watts,  what  is 
finest  in  it  is  not  the  moral  idea  which  in- 
forms it,  but  the  artistic  skill  by  which  that 
idea  is  embodied  pictorially.  In  no  sense  an 
original  thinker.  Watts  was  one  who  felt 
nobly  and  could  paint  greatly.  He  paints 
always  with  a  sense  of  the  glory  of  the  world, 
of  human  glory,  of  the  supreme  glory  of  the 
spirit,  or  of  God,  which  makes  all  these 
lesser  glories.  No  detail  stops  his  vision,  or 
puts  out  his  hand,  which  sweeps  freely,  at 


100       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

home  among  splendours.  His  is  a  kind  of 
heroic  world,  in  which  there  is  only  nobility 
and  affluence ;  every  colour  and  every  con- 
tour is  noble  and  ample,  only  sometimes  the 
painter's  enthusiasm  for  things  loses  the 
subtler  beauties  which  are  in  them,  and  so 
loses  truth,  as  well  as  this  more  intimate 
beauty,  by  the  way.  He  paints,  certainly, 
the  M^orld  he  lives  in ;  and  what  more  can 
any  one  ask  of  any  painter  ?  And  it  is  his 
feeling,  not  his  thought,  that  has  impressed 
itself  upon  his  work  wherever  it  is  good ; 
and  it  is  through  the  emotional  quality  of 
his  work,  conveyed  to  us  through  fine  or 
adequate  technique,  that  he  has  become  the 
favourite  painter  of  so  many  earnest  people. 
Take,  for  instance, '  Love  and  Life,'  which, 
we  are  told,  Watts  considered  '  perhaps  his 
most  direct  message  to  the  present  genera- 
tion.' As  a  message  nothing  could  be  more 
obvious ;  it  is  not  a  philosophy,  it  is  a 
truism.  It  could  be  sufficiently  exjDressed 
by  the  statement  that  love  supports  and  up- 
lifts. But  as  a  picture  it  is  full  of  delicate 
grace ;  the  lines  are  tender,  the  design  is 
strong  and  simple.  Take  the  most  popular 
of  all  the  allegories,  '  Hope.'     Its  symbolism 


WATTS  101 

is  not  really  fine,  not  intellectually  satisfy- 
ing. But  as  a  design  it  has  a  thrilling 
quality  which  artists  like  Leighton  and 
Tadema  have  never  approached,  in  that 
technical  skill  which  consists  in  giving  life 
to  a  correctly  drawn  outline.  One  need 
only  compare  it  with  any  one  of  the  figures 
in  Leighton's  '  Garden  of  the  Hesperides ' 
to  see  the  whole  extent  of  this  difference. 
Take  '  The  Happy  Warrior/  which  is  again 
a  popular  favourite.  Here  there  is  a  certain 
touch  of  sentimentality,  the  prettifying  of 
an  idea  ;  but  what  real  grace,  feeling,  charm, 
in  the  delightful  youth,  who  meets  his  death 
like  any  St.  Sebastian,  joyously.  In  all 
these  pictures  the  idea,  such  as  it  is,  is  a 
sufficient  and  not  too  obtrusive  part  of  the 
design,  and  the  design  itself  has  fine  pictorial 
qualities.  In  none  of  them,  perhaps,  is  the 
mental  conception  quite  so  transfiguring  an 
element  of  the  design  as  in  the  early 
'  Psyche.'  But  turn  for  an  instant  to  any 
of  the  later  and  more  determined  allegories, 
to  *  Mammon,'  for  instance.  Here  the  sym- 
bolism by  means  of  which  the  lesson  is  to  be 
taught  has  become  an  end  in  itself,  it  is 
worked  out  in    complicated   details   which 


102       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

appeal  to  the  understanding  rather  than  to 
the  sight.  And  this  syraboHsm  is  not 
subtle,  it  is  not  vision,  but  analogy,  and  the 
result  is  a  painted  melodrama  with  a  good 
moral. 

A  painter  of  souls,  like  Blake,  must  always 
obtain  a  large  part  of  the  admiration,  or  the 
forgiveness,  which  we  extend  to  him,  by  his 
technical  skill  in  the  treatment  of  material 
to  which  success  is  impossible.  The  direct 
representation  of  anything  unseen  by  the 
eyes,  and  only  mediately  conceived  by  the 
imagination,  can  only  affect  us  in  the  way 
intended  by  the  artist  if  it  makes  its  appeal 
to  us  by  its  qualities  of  beautiful  line,  beauti- 
ful colour,  or  beauty  of  composition.  Blake, 
at  his  best,  is  so  tremendous,  because  in  his 
endeavour  to  give  form  to  the  morning  stars 
singing  together,  and  God  riding  on  the 
whirlwind,  and  the  worms  talking  to  one 
another  on  the  earth,  he  creates  hne,  and 
the  movement  of  figures,  and  the  passion 
of  gesture,  with  so  unwearied  an  energy. 
Where  the  line  is  poor,  the  conception 
dwindles :  no  profound  meaning  was  ever 
conveyed  in  pictorial  art  except  through 
sureness    of    hand,    through    a    technique 


WATTS  103 

definitely  excellent  in  its  own  way.  The 
mistake  of  those  who  have  praised  such  a 
painter  as  Blake  for  his  conceptions,  and 
condemned  him  for  his  technique,  lies  in  a 
confusion  between  what  is  artistically  right, 
that  is,  truthful  to  beauty,  and  what  is 
academically  correct,  that  is,  faithful  to 
rule.  God's  arm,  in  the  drawing  at  the 
beginning  of  *  Europe,'  is  out  of  all  human 
proportion,  in  a  figure  done  after  the  ordi- 
nary type  of  humanity ;  but  the  arm  is 
technically  superb,  because  it  expresses  the 
instant  energy  of  omnipotence,  not  to  the 
mind,  but  to  the  mind  through  the  eye,  un- 
hesitatingly. Poor  technique  would  have 
been  to  have  drawn  a  faultlessly  modelled 
arm,  and  to  have  left  mind  and  eye  un- 
interested and  unconvinced. 

But  there  are  painters  who  are  not 
painters  of  souls,  like  Blake,  but  painters  of 
dreams  and  the  brooding  imagery  of  the 
senses,  like  Rossetti ;  and  these,  too,  are 
able  to  bring  us  under  the  subtlety  of  their 
mesmerism  only  by  their  masterly  obedience 
to  technique,  not  by  their  disregard  of  it. 
Rossetti  had  never  so  great  a  command  over 
his  material  as  Watts,  but  his  pictures  are 


104       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

good  or  bad  just  in  proportion  as  he  ad- 
mitted or  refused  to  admit  the  limits  of 
pictorial  expression,  and  the  degree  to 
which  idea  or  sensation  can  be  symbolised 
in  form,  of  which  the  idea  or  sensation  is 
only  a  passing  guest.  As  his  intention  over- 
powered him,  as  he  became  the  slave  and 
no  longer  the  master  of  his  dreams,  his  pic- 
tures became  no  longer  symbols,  but  idols. 
Venus,  growing  more  and  more  Asiatic  as 
the  mooned  crescent  begins  to  glimmer 
above  her  head,  and  her  name  changes  from 
Aphrodite  into  Astarte,  loses  all  the  fresh- 
ness of  the  waves  from  which  she  was  born, 
and  her  own  sorcery  hardens  her  into  a 
wooden  image  painted  for  savage  worship. 
Dreams  are  no  longer  content  to  be  turned 
into  waking  realities,  taking  the  colour  of 
the  daylight,  that  they  may  be  visible  to 
our  eyes ;  but  they  remain  lunar,  spectral, 
an  unintelligible  menace.  We  begin  to 
guess  at  the  meaning  of  pictures  which  no 
longer  delight  us  as  pictures,  turning  to  the 
sonnets  on  the  frames. 

But  Watts,  though  he  is  an  attentive 
host  to  dreams,  and  the  interpreter  of  souls, 
rarely  loses  control  of  his  own  vision,  or  con- 


WATTS  105 

fuses  spiritual  reality  with  a  reflection  of 
some  image  by  which  his  brain  receives  a 
glimpse  of  spiritual  reality.  He  makes  the 
great  compromise  willingly,  accepting  the 
compensation ;  and  remains  a  painter,  instead 
of  failing  to  be  a  poet. 


II 

'  With  the  language  of  beauty  in  full 
resonance  around  him,'  said  Watts,  in  a 
profound  article  on  '  The  Present  Conditions 
of  Art,'  '  art  was  not  difficult  to  the  painter 
and  sculptor  of  old  as  it  is  with  us.  .  .  . 
Every  artist  must  paint  what  he  sees,  rather 
every  artist  must  paint  what  is  around 
him,  can  produce  no  great  work  unless  he 
impress  the  character  of  his  age  upon  his 
production,  not  necessarily  taking  his  sub- 
jects from  it  (better  if  he  can),  but  taking 
the  impress  of  its  life.  ...  In  many  respects 
the  present  age  is  far  more  advanced  than 
preceding  times,  incomparably  more  full  of 
knowledge ;  but  the  language  of  great  art 
is  dead,  for  general,  noble  beauty  pervades 
life  no  more.  The  artist  is  obliged  to  return 
to  extinct  forms  of  speech  if  he  would  speak 


106       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

as  the  great  ones  have  spoken.  Nothing 
beautiful  is  seen  around  him,  excepting 
always  sky  and  trees,  and  sea ;  these,  as  he 
is  mainly  a  dweller  in  cities,  he  cannot  live 
enough  with.'  Here,  then,  we  have  a  sort 
of  personal  confession  of  faith,  a  statement, 
at  all  events,  of  a  definite  theory  of  art. 
'  The  artist  must  paint  what  is  around  him,' 
yet,  since  '  the  language  of  great  art  is  dead,' 
he  must  '  return  to  extinct  forms  of  speech ' : 
there,  in  a  word,  is  both  the  principle  and 
the  practice  of  Watts,  the  eclectic  principle, 
as  it  is  called,  with  its  acceptance  of  all  that 
is  helpful  in  tradition,  rather  than  the 
defiance  of  an  originality  which  needs  to 
assure  itself  that  it  stands  alone. 

Admitting,  as  every  artist  must  admit, 
that  beauty  is  the  supreme  end  of  art,  yet 
admitting  also,  as  every  critical  intelligence 
must  admit,  that  the  forms  and  manifesta- 
tions of  beauty  are  infinite,  the  problem,  to 
the  artist  of  to-day,  lies  in  the  choice 
between  many  difiSculties.  Modern  dress, 
hideous  in  the  case  of  men,  rarely  quite 
humbly  enough  subservient  to  the  body  in 
the  case  of  women  ;  the  surroundings  of  our 
lives,  the  ignoble  outward  conditions  under 


WATTS  107 

which,  for  the  most  part,  we  exist ;  the 
abandonment  of  ritual  and  ceremony,  in 
which  a  certain  orderly  beauty  had  once 
come  to  the  aid  of  our  religious  meditations 
and  our  more  serious  civic  moments;  our 
haste  to  improve  the  mechanical  side  of 
civilisation,  regardless  of  the  fitness  of 
things  to  the  eye  as  well  as  to  the  hand  ;  all 
this  has  left  little  ready-made  material  for 
the  painter  anxious  to  create  visible  beauty 
over  again  on  his  canvas.  It  is  with  a  kind 
of  despair  that  a  painter  like  Burne-Jones 
turns  his  back  on  the  world,  and,  shut  away 
from  nature  in  a  studio,  copies  figures, 
designs,  patterns,  which  once  meant  some- 
thing quite  personal  to  an  early  Italian 
painter,  but  which  can  now  mean  nothing  at 
all,  until  mere  persistence  in  copying  has 
trained  one's  hand  to  a  kind  of  second 
nature,  as  a  man  acquires  a  foreign  language 
by  talking  in  it  until  at  last  he  can  think  in 
it.  Gustave  Moreau,  taking  no  definite 
model,  but  adapting  many  suggestions  until 
he  has  formed  for  himself  a  composite,  arti- 
ficially personal  style,  without  relation  to 
anything  in  the  universe,  except  his  own 
intention  to  see  things  so,  makes  images  of 


108       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

a  world  of  jewels  and  the  smoke  of  incense, 
and  the  bodies  of  men  and  women  like 
flowers  turned  human  by  enchantment,  but 
keeping  in  their  fixed  eyes  and  rigid  limbs 
the  drowsiness  of  a  sleep  from  which  they 
have  only  half  awakened.  To  such  painters 
as  these,  beauty  and  the  modern  world  are 
in  open  and  inevitable  war ;  life  is  a  thing  to 
be  escaped  from,  not  turned  to  one's  pur- 
pose ;  let  us  paint  pictures,  they  say,  pictures 
of  pictures. 

But  to  another,  just  now  more  acceptable, 
school  of  painters,  the  modern  world  is  a 
thing  to  struggle  with,  to  conquer  in  fair 
fight,  to  compel  to  one's  purpose,  no  matter 
at  what  cost.  French  painters,  from  Courbet 
to  Degas,  English  painters  like  Whistler 
and  Sargent,  have  come  to  believe,  not,  as  I 
have  pointed  out,  that  beauty  can  only  be 
rendered  by  fine  technique,  but  that  beauty 
can  be  found  in  technique  only.  Degas  is 
typical  of  the  school  to  which  subject- 
matter  is  indifferent,  treatment  everything. 
Or  it  would  be  more  correct  to  say  that  the 
uglier  the  subject,  the  better  excuse  does  it 
give  for  virtuosity  of  technique ;  so  that 
Degas,  in  his  revolt  against  the  academic 


WATTS  109 

treatment  of  the  nude,  pretty  under  im- 
possible conditions,  strips  a  middle-aged 
model,  sets  her  to  stand  in  a  tin  bath  and 
squeeze  a  sponge  over  her  shoulders,  so  that 
the  attitude  reveals  every  thickening  crease 
of  flesh,  every  falling  away  of  contour,  every 
physical  degradation  of  age,  the  very  impress 
of  the  whalebones  of  the  corset,  the  line 
which  darkens  the  neck  where  the  collar  of 
the  dress  had  ended.  Painting  the  dance, 
he  takes  us  behind  the  scenes,  showing  us 
two  homely  girls  in  practising-dress,  strain- 
ing a  leg  forward  and  backward  against  a 
bar  in  side-practice,  while  the  shoulder- 
blades  stand  out  like  knives,  and  the  whole 
body  aches  with  effort.  And  Degas  does 
what  he  wants,  his  pictures  have  the  beauty 
of  consummate  skill,  they  have  all  that 
ingenuity  of  mind  and  mastery  of  line  can 
give  us  ;  they  are  miraculous  pieces  of  draw- 
ing, which  every  artist  must  admire,  as  he 
would  admire  a  drawing  by  Leonardo ;  but 
there  they  end,  where  the  Leonardo  draw- 
ing does  but  begin. 

There  is  yet  another  way  in  which  the 
modern  world  can  be  approached  in  art,  and 
Whistler  has  succeeded  in  obtaining  both 


110       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

modernity  and  beauty  by  a  method  faultless 
in  its  kind  ;  but,  after  all,  not  the  method 
of  the  greatest  masters,  above  all  not  the 
method  of  Velasquez.  Whistler  tricks  life 
and  the  world  into  beauty  by  accepting  in 
them  only  what  suits  his  purpose,  as  indeed 
every  artist  must  do,  but  also  by  narrowing 
his  purpose  until  it  is  indeed,  for  the  most 
part,  aptly  symbolised  by  the  butterfly  of 
his  signature.  Just  as  in  the  art  of  life,  in 
which  he  was  so  engaging  a  practitioner,  he 
evaded  a  difiicult  issue  by  the  disconcerting 
sting  of  a  pleasantry,  so,  in  the  art  of  paint- 
ing, he  evades  the  graver  difficulties  by  the 
agility  of  his  choice.  In  a  few  of  the  greatest 
of  his  portraits,  the  portrait  of  Carlyle,  of 
his  mother,  for  instance,  he  has  faced  every 
problem,  solved  every  problem  triumphantly, 
and  produced  masterpieces.  There,  the 
pattern  does  not  dwarf  the  body,  nor  the 
voices  of  the  colour  sing  down  the  soul. 
Something  of  the  gravity,  sureness  of  adjust- 
ment, strength  and  sel  f-control  of  the  Greeks 
informs  these  pictures  with  a  noble  complete- 
ness of  life.  But  there  are  times  when  his 
vision  is  that  of  a  creature  of  painful  nerves, 
who  shudders  at  the  contact  of  the  crowd, 


WATTS  111 

and  averts  his  eyes  from  the  ugliness  of 
suffering  and  the  soil  of  labour,  and  is  not 
quite  happy  under  the  grossness  of  sunlight, 
and  cultivates  a  shy  sympathy  with  the 
moon.  He  gives  us  the  ghost  of  the  river, 
people  who  are  the  phantoms  of  moods  and 
moments,  a  whole  shadowy  world,  in  which 
beauty  trembles  and  flutters,  and  is  a  breath 
escaping  upon  a  sigh,  or  dimming  for  an 
instant  the  tranquillity  of  a  mirror.  Velas- 
quez accepts  life,  making  it  distinguished  by 
his  way  of  seeing  it,  not  so  much  choosing 
from  among  its  moments  as  compelling  a 
moment  to  give  up  the  secret  of  a  lifetime. 
The  beauty  of  Velasquez  is  a  beauty  made 
up  of  choice  and  a  very  carefully  studied 
vision  of  reality ;  but  the  vision  is  always 
noble,  without  partiality  or  eccentricity,  as 
if  a  great  brain  were  always  at  work  there, 
behind  the  eyes.  Seeing  life  steadily,  and 
seeing  it  whole,  he  brought  the  world  grandly 
into  his  work,  all  the  world,  only  nothing 
ignoble.  Beauty  came  to  him,  more  directly 
than  it  has  come  to  any  other  painter  of 
humanity,  from  the  mere  thoughtfulness  of 
life  itself 

In  the  painting  of  Watts  there  might  seem 


112       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

at  first  sight  to  be  a  certain  lack  of  originality, 
at  all  events  in  the  manner  of  his  work  ; 
and  this  might  seem  to  be  seen  in  the  very 
variety  of  his  pictures,  the  ease  with  which 
he  passes  from  the  heavy,  solid  painting  of 
the  two  assertive  babies  who  stand  side  by 
side  in  a  little  canvas,  like  two  little  living 
pieces  of  brown  earth,  to  the  ghostly  flesh 
of  Uldra,  faint  as  snow-flakes,  scarcely  to  be 
recognised  as  human  at  all.  But  there  is  a 
profound  kind  of  originality,  which  becomes 
so  by  its  very  refusal  to  take  any  of  the 
obvious  roads  to  that  end.  The  style,  here, 
is  not  in  any  complete  sense  the  man,  but 
rather  the  man,  the  spirit  of  the  man,  per- 
vades his  work  with  a  kind  of  self-abnega- 
tion, resolute  to  speak  'the  language  of 
great  art,'  and  that  language  only,  no  matter 
who  may  have  spoken  it  before,  with  indeed 
a  grateful  humility  towards  all  those  who 
have  spoken  it. 

And  so,  when  a  composition  of  Watts 
reminds  us  of  something  which  we  have 
already  seen,  and  may  seem  already  too 
much  like  the  National  Gallery  to  be  quite 
sure  of  ever  having  a  place  there,  we  must 
remember  that,  to  Watts,  unselfishness  is  a 


WATTS  113 

part  of  art,  and  faithfulness  to  a  significant 
beauty  the  one  necessity.  What  he  creates 
is  a  picture,  properly  pictorial,  not  the  mere 
painting  of  an  idea,  but  the  picture  comes 
to  his  hands  through  his  soul,  and  does  not 
begin  to  interest  him  until  he  has  seen 
further  than  the  limits  of  its  outline.  An 
artist  may  paint  a  good  picture  by  painting, 
as  Degas  did,  a  man  sitting  at  a  cafe-table 
drinking  absinthe  ;  but  to  Watts  that  would 
not  be  a  great  picture,  because  it  was  not 
filled  with  a  great  meaning,  beyond  the 
pictorial  meaning  of  its  actual  lines  and  the 
psychological  meaning  of  its  realism,  or 
truth  to  common  nature.  And,  to  him,  to 
obtain  a  handling  distinctively  personal  in 
manner,  apart  entirely  from  what  that 
handling  tries  to  embody,  would  seem  as 
much  beside  the  question  as  to  aim  at  this 
busy,  passing  capture  of  things  on  the  wing, 
the  unimportant  truth  of  the  moment. 
Looking  for  a  noble  kind  of  beauty,  he  sees 
as  if  with  tradition  in  his  eyesight,  and  it  is 
really  '  what  is  around  him,'  as  well  as  within 
him,  that  he  paints  in  those  symbols  of 
passionate  human  ideas.  Love,  Life,  Death, 
Hope,    Pity,   into    which   the  human  form 

H 


114       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

comes  in  a  perfected  way  of  its  own,  with 
chastened  flesh  and  meditative  eyes,  and  a 
drapery  which  might  so  easily  be  the  con- 
ventional drapery  of  studios,  but  for  the 
sensitive  warmth  of  the  hand  which  has 
given  meaning  to  its  folds.  An  embracing 
imagination  quickens  these  canvases  into 
an  unfaltering  life  of  the  soul ;  the  same 
imagination  fingers  the  clay  and  moulds  the 
bronze  into  exactly  the  same  vehemence  of 
beauty.  The  opal  of  a  miraculous  landscape, 
a  landscape  which  catches  and  creates  upon 
canvas  every  colour  of  a  harlequin  opal,  has 
the  same  feeling,  truth,  tenderness,  the  same 
nobility  in  the  adoration  of  beauty,  as  the 
supreme  tragedy  of  '  Paolo  and  Francesca,' 
in  which,  perhaps,  the  work  of  the  painter 
reaches  its  highest  point  of  complete 
achievement. 

In  *  Paolo  and  Francesca '  passion  is 
seen  eternalised  at  the  moment  of  weary 
ecstasy  when  desire  has  become  a  memory, 
and  memory  has  extinguished  the  world. 
These  bodies  are  like  the  hollow  shell  left 
by  flames  which  have  burnt  themselves  out, 
and  they  float  in  the  fiery  air,  weightless 
and  listless,  as  dry  leaves  are  carried  along 


WATTS  115 

a  wave  of  wind.  All  life  has  gone  out  of 
them  except  the  energy  of  that  one  memory, 
which  lives  in  the  pallor  of  their  flesh,  and 
in  the  red  hollows  of  the  woman's  half- 
closed  eyes,  and  in  the  ashen  hollows  of  the 
man's  cheeks.  Paolo  almost  smiles ;  Fran- 
cesca  opens  her  lips  as  if  still  in  thirst  of 
that  kiss,  but  her  lips  are  shrivelled,  and 
his  remain  closed  for  ever.  Her  hand,  a 
faint,  glimmering  thing,  from  which  the 
sense  of  touch  has  almost  ebbed  out,  still 
seeks  his  hand,  and  his  hand  receives  it, 
with  so  extreme  a  weariness  that  the  thumb 
remains  just  lifted  from  the  clasp,  not  touch- 
ing her.  A  mortal  faintness  envelops  them, 
in  the  folds  of  drapery,  in  the  languor  of  the 
bodies,  to  which  death  has  brought  neither 
forgetfulness  nor  separation,  only  the  swoon 
which  follows  passion,  made  endless,  and 
aware  of  its  own  helplessness.  Pride  in  the 
man's  face  heightens  its  anguish,  giving  it 
a  steadfast  and  angry  dignity  ;  but  the  face 
of  the  woman  is  all  eaten  up  by  anguish  ; 
there  is  nothing  in  it  but  anguish  and  the 
hopelessness  of  desire  which  has  been  ful- 
filled and  not  satiated  with  fulfilment. 
Now,  they  do   not    love,   nor  repent,    nor 


116       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

hope,  only  remember ;  they  have  Hved, 
they  are  no  longer  living,  and  they  cannot 
die. 

And  that  quality  of  imagination,  which  in 
this  picture  is  the  eternity  of  the  weariness 
of  the  senses,  burns  with  an  equally  stead- 
fast flame  in  all  the  finer  work  of  Watts. 
There  is  a  baby  head  and  shoulders  of  Gany- 
mede, which  might  be  taken  as  the  type  of 
this  kind  of  imaginative  painting,  in  which 
the  spirit  of  the  work  is  like  a  light  shining 
through  crystal,  an  inner  radiance,  inform- 
ing the  whole  luminous  substance.  The 
head  with  all  its  curls  is  tossed  up  towards 
the  sunlight,  drinking  it  in  with  the  petulant 
vehemence  of  childhood  ;  flashes  of  white 
light  strike  on  the  breast  and  into  the  wide- 
open  eyes  and  across  the  eager  shoulder ; 
the  eyes  are  full  of  the  laughter  of  animal 
joy,  the  breast  pants,  as  if  it  felt  the  warmth 
of  day  in  its  veins.  And  in  the  symbolical 
figure  of  Hope,  so  full  of  meaning,  but  of 
meaning  which  is  all  beauty,  an  imagination 
which  has  become  almost  impersonal,  in  its 
renunciation  of  all  but  the  humility  of  ser- 
vice to  a  deep,  emotional  conviction,  takes 


WATTS  117 

hold  of  us,  and  draws  us  up  into  its 
own  finer  atmosphere,  by  an  irresistible 
charm  of  line  and  colour  and  something 
else,  which  is  after  all  the  personality  of  the 
painter. 

i9oa 


WHISTLER 


WHISTLER 


Whistler  is  dead,  and  there  goes  with  him 
one  of  the  greatest  painters  and  one  of  the 
most  original  personalities  of  our  time.  He 
was  in  his  seventieth  year,  and  until  quite 
lately  seemed  the  youngest  man  in  London. 
Unlike  most  artists,  he  was  to  be  seen 
everywhere,  and  he  was  heard  wherever  he 
was  seen.  He  was  incapable  of  rest,  and 
incapable  of  existing  without  production. 
When  he  was  not  working  at  his  own  art, 
he  was  elaborating  a  line  art  of  conversation. 
In  both  he  was  profoundly  serious,  and  in 
both  he  aimed  at  seeming  to  be  the  irre- 
sponsible butterfly  of  his  famous  signature. 
He  deceived  the  public  for  many  years ;  he 
probably  deceived  many  of  his  acquaintances 
till  the  day  of  his  death.  Yet  his  whole  hfe 
was  a  devotion  to  art,  and  everything  that 


161 


122       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

he  said  or  wrote  proclaimed  that  devotion, 
however  fantastically.  I  wish  I  could 
remember  half  the  things  he  said  to  me,  at 
any  one  of  those  few  long  talks  which  I  had 
with  him  in  his  quiet,  serious  moments.  I 
remember  the  dinner  party  at  which  I  first 
met  him,  not  many  years  ago,  and  my  first 
impression  of  his  fierce  and  impertinent 
chivalry  on  behalf  of  art.  Some  person 
officially  connected  with  art  was  there,  an 
urbane  sentimentalist;  and  after  every 
official  platitude  there  was  a  sharp  crackle 
from  Whistler's  corner,  and  it  was  as  if  a 
rattlesnake  had  leapt  suddenly  out.  The 
person  did  not  know  when  he  was  dead,  and 
Whistler  transfixed  him  mortally,  I  know  not 
how  many  times ;  and  still  he  smiled  and 
talked.  I  had  said  something  that  pleased 
Whistler,  and  he  peered  at  me  with  his  old 
bright  eyes  from  far  down  the  room ;  and  after 
dinner  he  took  me  aside  and  talked  to  me  for 
a  full  hour.  He  was  not  brilliant,  or  con- 
sciously clever,  or  one  talking  for  efiect ;  he 
talked  of  art,  certainly  for  art's  sake,  with 
the  passionate  reverence  of  the  lover,  and 
with  the  joyous  certainty  of  one  who  knows 
himself  beloved.      In  what  he  said,  of  his 


WHISTLER  123 

own  work  and  of  others,  there  was  neither 
vanity  nor  humility ;  he  knew  quite  well 
what  in  his  art  he  had  mastered  and  what 
others  had  failed  to  master.  But  it  was 
chiefly  of  art  in  the  abstract  that  he  talked, 
and  of  the  artist's  attitude  towards  nature 
and  towards  his  materials.  He  only  said 
to  me,  I  suppose,  what  he  had  been  saying 
and  writing  for  fifty  years ;  it  was  his 
gospel,  which  he  had  preached  mockingly, 
that  he  might  disconcert  the  mockers ;  but 
he  said  it  all  like  one  possessed  of  a  con- 
viction, and  as  if  he  were  stating  that 
conviction  with  his  first  ardour. 

And  the  man,  whom  I  had  only  before 
seen  casually  and  at  a  distance,  seemed  to 
me  almost  preposterously  the  man  of  his  work. 
At  dinner  he  had  been  the  controversialist, 
the  acrobat  of  words ;  I  understood  how 
this  little,  spasmodically  alert,  irritably 
sensitive  creature  of  brains  and  nerves  could 
never  have  gone  calmly  through  life,  as 
Rodin,  for  instance,  goes  calmly  through 
life,  a  solid  labourer  at  his  task,  turning 
neither  to  the  right  nor  to  the  left,  attending 
only  to  his  own  business.  He  was  a  great 
wit,  and  his  wit  was  a  personal  expression. 


124       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

Stupidity  hurt  him,  and  he  avenged  himself 
for  the  pain.  All  his  laughter  was  a  crack- 
ling of  thorns  under  the  pot,  but  of  flaming 
thorns,  setting  the  pot  in  a  fury  of  boiling. 
I  never  saw  any  one  so  feverishly  alive  as 
this  little,  old  man,  with  his  bright,  withered 
cheeks,  over  which  the  skin  was  drawn 
tightly,  his  darting  eyes,  under  their  prickly 
bushes  of  eyebrow,  his  fantastically- creased 
black  and  white  curls  of  hair,  his  bitter  and 
subtle  mouth,  and,  above  all,  his  exquisite 
hands,  never  at  rest.  He  had  the  most 
sensitive  fingers  I  have  ever  seen,  long,  thin, 
bony,  wrinkled,  every  finger  alive  to  the 
tips,  like  the  fingers  of  a  mesmerist.  He 
was  proud  of  his  hands,  and  they  were  never 
out  of  sight;  they  travelled  to  his  moustache, 
crawled  over  the  table,  grimaced  in  little 
gestures.  If  ever  a  painter  had  painter's 
hands  it  was  Whistler.  And  his  voice,  with 
its  strange  accent,  part  American,  part 
deliberately  French,  part  tuned  to  the  key 
of  his  wit,  was  not  less  personal  or  signifi- 
cant. There  was  scarcely  a  mannerism 
which  he  did  not  at  one  time  or  another 
adopt,  always  at  least  half  in  caricature  of 
itself.     He  had  a  whole  language  of  pauses, 


WHISTLER  125 

in  the  middle  of  a  word  or  of  a  sentence, 
with  all  sorts  of  whimsical  quotation-marks, 
setting  a  mocking  emphasis  on  solemn  follies. 
He  had  cultivated  a  manner  of  filling  up 
gaps  which  did  not  exist ;  '  and  so  forth  and 
so  on,'  thrown  in  purely  for  effect,  and  to 
prepare  for  what  was  coming.  A  laugh, 
deliberately  artificial,  came  when  it  was 
wanted;  it  was  meant  to  annoy,  and  annoyed, 
but  needlessly. 

He  was  a  great  wit,  really  spontaneous, 
so  far  as  what  is  intellectual  can  ever  be  spon- 
taneous. His  wit  was  not,  as  with  Oscar 
Wilde,  a  brilliant  sudden  gymnastic,  with 
words  in  which  the  phrase  itself  was  always 
worth  more  than  what  it  said  ;  it  was  a  wit 
of  ideas,  in  which  the  thing  said  was  at 
least  on  the  level  of  the  way  of  saying  it. 
And,  with  him,  it  was  really  a  weapon,  used 
as  seriously  as  any  rapier  in  an  eternal  duel 
with  the  eternal  enemy.  He  fought  for 
himself,  but  in  fighting  for  himself  he  fought 
for  every  sincere  artist.  He  spared  no 
form  of  stupidity,  neither  the  unintelligent 
stupidity  of  the  general  public,  and  of  the 
critics  who  represent  the  public,  nor  the 
much  more  dangerous  stupidity   of  intelli- 


126       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

gences  misguided,  as  in  the  '  leading  case '  of 
Ruskin.  No  man  made  more  enemies,  or 
deserved  better  friends.  He  never  cared, 
or  was  able,  to  distinguish  between  them. 
They  changed  places  at  an  opinion  or  for  an 
idea. 

He  was  a  great  master  of  the  grotesque 
in  conversation,  and  the  portrait  which  he 
made  of  Mr.  Leyland  as  a  many-tentacled 
devil  at  a  piano,  a  thing  of  horror  and  beauty, 
is  for  once  a  verbal  image  put  into  paint, 
with  that  whole-hearted  delight  in  exuberant 
extravagance  which  made  his  talk  wildly 
heroic.  That  painting  is  his  one  joke  in 
paint,  his  one  expression  of  a  personal  feel- 
ing so  violent  that  it  overcame  his  scruples  as 
an  artist.  And  yet  even  that  is  not  really 
an  exception ;  for  out  of  a  malicious  joke, 
begun,  certainly,  in  anger,  beauty  exudes 
like  the  scent  of  a  poisonous  flower. 

Many  of  his  sayings  are  preserved,  in 
which  he  seems  to  scoff  at  great  artists  and 
at  great  artistic  qualities.  They  are  to  be 
interpreted,  not  swallowed.  His  irreverence, 
as  it  was  called,  was  only  one,  not  easily 
recognisable,  sign  of  a  delicate  sensitiveness 
in  choice.     And  it  had  come  to  be  one  of 


WHISTLER  127 

the  parts  that  he  played  in  public,  one  of 
the  things  expected  of  him,  to  which  he  lent 
himself,  after  all,  satirically.  And  he  could 
be  silent  on  occasion,  very  etiectively.  I 
happened  to  meet  him  one  day  in  front  of 
the  Chigi  Botticelli,  when  it  was  on  view 
at  Colnaghi's,  He  walked  to  and  fro,  peered 
into  the  picture,  turned  his  head  sideways, 
studied  it  with  the  approved  air  of  one 
studying  it,  and  then  said  nothing.  *  Why 
drag  in  Botticelli  ? '  was,  I  suppose,  what  he 
thought. 

II 

Taste  in  Whistler  was  carried  to  the 
point  of  genius,  and  became  creative.  He 
touched  nothing,  possessed  nothing,  that  he 
did  not  remake  or  assimilate  in  some  faultless 
and  always  personal  way  :  the  frames  of  his 
pictures,  the  forms  of  the  books  which  were 
printed  for  him,  the  shapes  of  the  old  silver 
which  he  collected,  the  arrangement  of  that 
silver  when  it  was  exhibited  among  other 
collections.  The  monogram  which  he  de- 
signed for  a  friend  who  was  a  publisher  is 
the  simplest  and  the  most  decorative  mono- 


128       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

gram  that  I  can  remember.  He  drew  the 
lettering  for  the  books  of  another  friend, 
and  this  lettering,  which  seems  the  most 
obvious  thing  in  the  world,  makes  the 
lettering  on  every  other  modern  book  look 
clumsy  or  far-fetched.  And  in  none  of 
these  things  does  he  try  to  follow  a  fine 
model  or  try  to  avoid  following  a  model. 
He  sees  each  thing  in  its  own  way,  within 
its  own  limits. 

No  one  ever  had  a  more  exact  and 
reverent  sense  of  limits,  a  narrower  and 
more  variable  standard  of  perfection.  He 
mastered,  in  his  own  art,  medium  after 
medium,  and  his  work,  in  each  medium,  is 
conspicuous  for  its  natural  sense  of  the 
canvas  or  the  paper,  for  its  precise  know- 
ledge of  exactly  what  can  be  done  with  all 
the  substances  and  materials  of  art.  He 
never  sought  novelty  by  confusing  two 
methods,  but  made  the  most  of  each  with  a 
tender  and  rigid  economy.  When  he  paints, 
you  distinguish  the  thread  of  his  canvas; 
in  his  etchings  and  lithographs  the  meaning 
of  the  design  extends  to  the  rim  of  the 
margin. 

A-nd  of  all  modern  painters  he  is  the  only 


WHISTLER  129 

one  who  completely  realised  that  a  picture 
is  part  of  the  decoration  of  a  wall,  and  of 
the  wall  of  a  modern  room.  When  pictures 
ceased  to  be  painted  on  the  walls  of  churches 
and  palaces,  or  for  a  given  space  above 
altars,  there  came  into  the  world  that 
abnormal  thing,  the  easel-picture.  At  the 
present  day  there  is  only  one  country  in 
which  the  sense  of  decoration  exists,  or  is 
allowed  to  have  its  way ;  and  it  was  from 
the  artists  of  Japan  that  Whistler  learnt 
the  alphabet  of  decorative  painting.  His 
pictures  and  his  black  and  white  work  are 
first  of  all  pieces  of  decoration,  and  there  is 
not  one  which  might  not  make,  in  the 
Japanese  way,  the  only  decoration  of  a  room. 
Once,  indeed,  he  was  allowed,  as  no  other 
great  artist  of  our  time  has  been  allowed,  to 
decorate  a  room  for  one  of  his  own  pictures. 
The  Peacock  Room  was  made  out  of  a 
gradual  transformation,  and  it  was  made  as 
a  sort  of  shrine  for  the  lovely  picture,  '  La 
Princesse  du  Pays  de  la  Porcelaine.'  Every 
inch  of  the  wall,  ceiling,  and  wainscoting, 
the  doors,  the  frames  of  the  shutters,  was 
worked  into  the  scheme  of  the  blues 
and    golds,    and    Mr.  Ley  land's   china   had 


130       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

its  part,  no  doubt,  in  the  scheme.  But  I  do 
not  think  Whistler  can  be  held  responsible 
for  the  gilded  cages  (though,  indeed,  making 
the  best  of  a  bad  bargain,  he  gilded  them) 
which  prop  up  the  china  round  so  much  of 
the  walls.  These,  I  gather,  he  found  already- 
made,  and  with  them  he  had  to  struggle  : 
he  accepted  them  frankly,  and  their  glitter 
is  a  pretence  on  his  part  that  he  liked  a  room 
hung  with  bird-cages  and  plate-racks.  But 
the  gold  peacocks  on  the  shutters,  with 
their  solid  and  glowing  fantasy  of  design, 
the  gold  peacocks  on  the  blue  leather  of  the 
wall  facing  the  picture,  with  their  dainty 
and  sparkling  fantasy  of  design,  the  sombre 
fantasy  of  the  peacocks'  feathers,  untouched 
by  gold,  their  colours  repressed  and  with- 
drawn into  shadow,  above  the  lamps  on  the 
ceiling :  all  these,  into  which  he  put  his 
very  soul,  which  are  so  many  signatures  of 
his  creed  and  science  of  beauty,  are  woven 
together  into  a  web  or  network  of  almost 
alarming  loveliness,  to  make  a  room  into 
which  nature,  sunlight,  or  any  mortal  com- 
promise could  never  enter,  a  wizard's  chapel 
oi  art.  Here,  where  he  is  least  human,  he 
joins    with    that    other   part    of  himself  in 


WHISTLER  131 

which  all  this  sense  of  what  goes  to  make 
decoration  mingled  with  another  sense, 
completing  it.  When  he  is  greatest,  in  the 
portrait  of  his  mother,  for  instance,  he  is 
only  more,  and  not  less,  decorative,  as  he 
gives  you  so  infinitely  much  more  than  mere 
decoration.  There  is  no  compromise  with 
taste  in  the  abandonment  to  a  great  inspira- 
tion. Inspiration,  with  him,  includes  taste, 
on  its  way  to  its  own  form  of  perfection. 

It  was  characteristic  of  Whistler  that  he 
should  go  to  music  for  the  titles  of  his 
pictures.  A  picture  may  indeed  be  termed 
a  '  Nocturne,'  even  more  justly  than  a  piece 
of  music,  but  it  was  quite  as  it  should  be  if 
Chopin  really  was  in  Whistler's  mind  when 
he  used  the  word.  Gautier  had  written 
his  'Symphonie  en  Blanc  Majeur'  before 
Whistler  painted  his  '  Symphonies  in  White,' 
'Harmony  in  Grey  and  Green,'  'Arrange- 
ment in  Black  and  Brown,'  'Caprice  in 
Purple  and  Gold ' :  all  are  terms  perfectly 
appropriate  to  painting,  yet  all  suggest 
music.  And  to  the  painter  of  Sarasate, 
music  could  hardly  have  failed  to  represent 
the  type  of  all  that  his  own  art  was  aiming 
at,   in  its   not   always   fully   understood   or 


132       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

recognised  way.  In  music,  too,  he  had  his 
significant  choice.  I  remember  once  his 
impatience  with  my  praise  of  Ysaye,  whom 
he  had  never  heard,  because  the  praise 
seemed  like  a  poor  compliment  to  Sarasate, 
whose  marvellous  purity  of  tone  he  recalled 
with  an  intolerant  and  jealous  delight.  He 
thought,  and  was  perhaps  right  in  thinking, 
that  there  never  could  have  been  a  purer 
tone  than  Sarasate's,  and  the  rest  mattered, 
at  all  events,  much  less. 

And  so,  in  speaking  of  Whistler's  pictures, 
though  nothing  so  merely  and  so  wholly 
pictorial  was  ever  done,  it  is  musical  terms 
that  come  first  to  one's  mind.  Every 
picture  has  a  purity  of  tone  like  that  of  the 
finest  violin  playing.  Sometimes  a  Gior- 
gione,  sometimes  a  Watteau,  comes  to  one  as 
if  in  exchange  for  music  ;  Whistler  always. 

*Art  should  be  independent  of  all  clap- 
trap,' he  wrote,  in  one  of  the  most  valuable  of 
his  pastoral  letters,  '  should  stand  alone,  and 
appeal  to  the  artistic  sense  of  eye  or  ear, 
without  confounding  this  with  emotions 
entirely  foreign  to  it,  as  devotion,  pity,  love, 
patriotism,  and  the  like.  All  these  have  no 
kind  of  concern  with  it ;  and  that  is  why  I 


WHISTLER  133 

insist  on  calling  my  works  "  arrangements  " 
and  "  harmonies."  Take  the  picture  of  my 
mother,  exhibited  at  the  Royal  Academy,  as 
an  "  Arrangement  in  Grey  and  Black."  Now 
that  is  what  it  is.  To  me  it  is  interesting 
as  a  picture  of  my  mother ;  but  what  can  or 
ought  the  public  to  care  about  the  identity 
of  the  portrait  ? ' 

There,  finally  stated,  is  one  of  the  great, 
continually  forgotten,  truths  of  art ;  and,  in 
the  paragraph  which  follows,  the  lesson  is 
completed.  '  The  imitator  is  a  poor  kind  of 
creature.  If  the  man  who  paints  only  the 
tree,  or  flower,  or  other  surface  he  sees 
before  him  were  an  artist,  the  king  of  artists 
would  be  the  photographer.  It  is  for  the 
artist  to  do  something  beyond  this  :  in  por- 
trait painting  to  put  on  canvas  something 
more  than  the  face  the  model  wears  for  that 
one  day  ;  to  paint  the  man,  in  short,  as  well 
as  his  features ;  in  arrangement  of  colours 
to  treat  a  flower  as  his  key,  not  as  his  model.' 

In  '  Mr.  Whistler's  Ten  o'  Clock,'  he  tells 
us  :  *  Nature  contains  the  elements,  in  colour 
and  form,  of  all  pictures,  as  the  keyboard  con- 
tains the  notes  of  all  music.  But  the  artist 
is  born  to  pick  and  choose,  and  group  with 


134       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

science,  those  elements, that  the  result  may  be 
beautiful — as  the  musician  gathers  his  notes, 
and  forms  his  chords,  until  he  brings  forth 
from  chaos,  glorious  harmony.  To  say  to 
the  painter  that  Nature  is  to  be  taken  as 
she  is,  is  to  say  to  the  player,  that  he  may 
sit  on  the  piano.'  Now,  in  all  this,  which 
was  once  supposed  to  be  so  revolutionary, 
so  impertinent  even,  there  is  just  so  much 
exaggeration  as  wit  lends  to  any  single 
aspect  of  truth.  But  it  is  truth,  and  that 
aspect  of  truth  which,  in  our  time,  most 
needs  emphasis. 

In  our  time,  art  is  on  its  defence.  All 
the  devouring  mouths  of  the  common  virtues 
and  approved  habits  are  open  against  it, 
and  for  the  most  part  it  exists  on  sufferance, 
by  pretending  to  be  something  else  than 
what  it  is,  by  some  form  of  appeal  to  public 
charity  or  public  misapprehension ;  rarely 
by  professing  to  be  concerned  only  with 
itself,  and  bound  only  by  its  own  laws. 
Great  critics  like  Ruskin  and  great  artists 
like  Watts  have  done  infinite  harm  by 
taking  the  side  of  the  sentimentalists,  by 
attaching  moral  values  to  lines  and  colours, 
by    allowing     themselves    to    confirm    the 


WHISTLER  135 

public  in  some  of  its  worst  confusions  of 
mind.  When  Whistler  said  of  one  of  his 
*  harmonies  in  grey  and  gold/  in  which  a 
black  figure  is  seen  outside  a  tavern  in  the 
snow,  '  I  care  nothing  for  the  past,  present, 
or  future  of  the  black  figure  placed  there, 
because  the  black  was  wanted  at  that 
spot,'  he  was  challenging,  in  that  statement 
so  simple  as  to  be  self-evident,  a  whole 
aesthetics,  the  aesthetics  of  the  crowd  and 
its  critics.  Only  Mallarme,  in  our  time, 
has  rendered  so  signal  a  service  to  art. 


Ill 


*A  picture  is  finished/  wrote  Whistler, 
'  when  all  trace  of  the  means  used  to  bring 
about  the  end  has  disappeared.  To  say  of  a 
picture,  as  is  often  said  in  its  praise,  that  it 
shows  great  and  earnest  labour,  is  to  say 
that  it  is  incomplete  and  unfit  for  view.  .  .  . 
The  work  of  the  Master  reeks  not  of  the 
sweat  of  the  brow — suggests  no  effort — and 
is  finished  from  the  beginning.'  In  that  last 
phrase,  it  seems  to  me,  Whistler  has  said 
the  essential  thing,  the  thing  which  distin- 
guishes the  masterpiece  from  the  experiment. 


136       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

People  have  said,  people  still  sometimes  say, 
that  Whistler's  work  is  slight,  and  they 
intimate,  because  it  is  slight,  it  is  ot  little 
value.  The  question  is,  is  it  finished  from 
the  beginning,  and  has  all  trace  of  labour 
disappeared  at  the  end  ? 

There  is  a  lithograph  of  Mallarme,  repro- 
duced in  the  '  Vers  et  Prose,'  vs^hich,  to 
those  who  knew  him,  recalls  the  actual  man 
as  no  other  portrait  does.  It  is  faint, 
evasive,  a  mist  of  lines  and  spaces  that  seem 
like  some  result  of  happy  accident :  '  sub- 
tiles,  eveillees  comme  Timprovisation  et 
I'inspiration,'  as  Baudelaire  said  of  the 
Thames  etchings.  Yet  it  cost  Whistler 
forty  sittings  to  get  this  last  touch  of  im- 
provisation into  his  portrait.  He  succeeded, 
but  at  the  cost  of  what  pains  '?  '  All  trace 
of  the  means  used  to  bring  about  the  end 
has  disappeared,'  after  how  formidable,  how 
unrelaxing  a  labour ! 

It  is  the  aim  of  Whistler,  as  of  so  much 
modern  art,  to  be  taken  at  a  hint,  divined 
at  a  gesture,  or  by  telepathy.  Mallarme, 
suppressing  syntax  and  punctuation,  the 
essential  links  of  things,  sometimes  fails  in 
his  incantation,  and  brings  before  us  things 


WHISTLER  137 

homeless    and   unattached    in    middle    air. 
Verlaine   subtilises  words  in  a   song   to   a 
mere  breathing  of  music.    And  so  in  Whistler 
there  are  problems  to  be  guessed,  as  well  as 
things  to  be  seen.      But   that   is   because 
these     exceptional     difficult     moments     of 
nature,     these      twilight      aspects,      these 
glimpses   in    which   one   sees    hardly   more 
than  a  colour,  no  shape  at  all,  or   shapes 
covered  by  mist  or  night,  or  confused  by 
sunlight,  have  come   to  seem   to   him   the 
only  aspects  worth  caring  about.     Without 
'strangeness  in   its  proportion,'  he  can  no 
longer  see  beauty,  but  it  is  the  rarity   of 
beauty,  always,  that  he  seeks,  never  a  strange 
thing  for  the  sake  of  strangeness  ;    so  that 
there  is  no  eccentricity,  as  there  is  no  dis- 
play, in  his  just  and  reticent  records.     If  he 
paints  artificial  light,  it  is  to  add  a  new, 
strange  beauty  to  natural  objects,  as  night 
and  changing  lights  really  add   to    them ; 
and  he  finds  astonishing  beauties  in  the  fire- 
works at  Cremorne  Gardens,  in  the  rockets 
that  fall  into  the  blue  waters  under  Batter- 
sea  Bridge.      They  are  things  beautiful  in 
themselves,  or  made  beautiful  by  the  com- 
panionship and  co-operation  of  the  night ; 


138       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

in  a  picture  they  can  certainly  be  as  beauti- 
ful as  stars  and  sunsets. 

Or,  take  some  tiny,  scarcely  visible  sketch 
in  water-colour  on  tinted  paper :  it  is  nothing, 
and  it  is  enough,  for  it  is  a  moment  of  faint 
colour  as  satisfying  in  itself  as  one  of  those 
moments  of  faint  colour  which  we  see  come 
and  go  in  the  sky  after  sunset.  No  one  but 
Whistler  has  ever  done  these  things  in  paint- 
ing ;  Verlaine  has  done  the  equivalent  thing 
in  poetry.  They  have  their  brief  coloured  life 
like  butterflies,  and  with  the  same  moment- 
ary perfection.  No  one  had  ever  cared  to 
preserve  just  these  aspects,  as  no  one  before 
Verlaine  had  ever  cared  to  sing  certain  bird 
notes.  Each  was  satisfied  when  he  had 
achieved  the  particular,  delicate  beauty  at 
which  he  had  aimed  ;  neither  cared  or  needed 
to  go  on,  add  the  footnote  to  the  text,  en- 
close the  commentary  within  the  frame,  as 
most  poets  and  painters  are  considerate 
enough  to  do. 

I  have  quoted  Baudelaire,  one  of  the  first 
to  recognise  the  genius  of  Whistler,  as  he  was 
one  of  the  first  to  recognise  the  genius  of 
Wagner,  and  another  saying  of  his,  spoken 
of  Edgar  Poe,  comes  into  my  mind,  a  say- 


WHISTLER  139 

ing  wliish  may,  I  think,  be  applied  almost 
equally  to  Whistler  :  '  Autant  certains 
ecrivains  affectent  I'abandon,  visant  au 
chef-d'ceuvre  les  yeux  fermes,  pleins  de 
confiance  dans  le  desordre,  et  attendant  que 
les  caract^res  jet^s  au  plafond  retombent  en 
po^me  sur  le  parquet,  autant  Edgar  Poe, — 
Tun  des  hommes  les  plus  inspires  que  je 
connaisse, — a  mis  d'affectation  a  cacher  la 
spontaneite,  a  simuler  le  sang-froid  et  la 
deliberation.'  And,  like  Poe,  it  was  a  com- 
bination of  beauty  and  strangeness  which 
Whistler  sought  in  art :  '  I'etranget^,  qui 
est  comme  le  condiment  indispensable  de 
toute  beaut e.'  There  is  something  mys- 
terious in  most  of  his  pictures,  and  the 
mystery  is  for  the  most  part  indefinable. 
These  fashionable  women,  drawing  on  their 
gloves  in  the  simplest  of  daily  attitudes, 
these  children,  standing  in  the  middle  of 
the  floor  as  a  child  stands  to  be  looked  at, 
these  men  in  black  coats,  are  all  thinking 
thoughts  which  they  hide  from  us,  or  repres- 
sing sensations  which  they  do  not  wish  us  to 
share.  Huysmans  has  said  with  his  deliber- 
ate exaggeration,  speaking  of  the  portrait 
of  Miss   Alexander :    '  Ainsi   que   dans  les 


140       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

autres  oeuvres  de  M.  Whistler,  il  y  a,  dans 
cette  toile,  un  coin  supraterrestre,  decon- 
certant.  Certes,  son  personnage  est  ressem- 
blant,  est  reel,  cela  est  sur  ;  certes,  il  y  a,  en 
sus  de  sa  chair,  un  pen  de  son  caractere  dans 
cette  peinture,  mais  il  y  a  aussi  iin  cote 
surnaturel  emane  de  ce  peintre  mysterieux, 
un  peu  spectral,  qui  justifie,  dans  une  cer- 
taine  mesure,  ce  mot  de  spirite  ecrit  par 
Desnoyers.  L'on  ne  pent,  en  efFet,  lire  les 
revelations  plus  ou  moins  veridiques  du 
docteur  Crookes  sur  cette  Katie,  sur  cette 
ombre  incarnee  en  une  forme  dedoublee  de 
femme  tangible  et  pourtant  fluide,  sans 
songer  a  ces  portraits  de  femmes  de  Whistler; 
ces  portraits-fantomes  qui  semblent  reculer, 
vouloir  s'enfoncer  dans  le  mur,  avec  leurs 
yeux  enigmatiques  et  leur  bouche  d'un 
rouge  glace,  de  goule.'  To  say  quite  that  is 
to  add  an  emphasis  to  Whistler  much  too 
emphatic  for  his  intentions,  but  how  far 
from  the  dull  insistence  of  ordinary  life, 
from  the  unmeaning  or  deceiving  mask 
which  most  people  present  to  the  world,  are 
these  strangely  existent,  these  actual  and 
uncommon  people  whom  he  has  dreamed  on 
canvas,  and   they  were  there !    He  is   the 


WHISTLER  141 

visionary  of  reality,  which  he  sees  with  all 
the  vividness  of  hallucination.  And  it  was 
alike  this  characteristic  of  his  temperament 
and  a  definite  artistic  theory  of  the  means 
to  an  end,  in  portrait-painting,  which  led 
to  the  production  of  perhaps  his  greatest 
pictures. 

It  was  one  of  Whistler's  aims  in  portrait- 
painting  to  estabHsh  a  reasonable  balance 
between  the  man  as  he  sits  in  the  chair  and 
the  image  of  the  man  reflected  back  to  you 
from  the  canvas.  '  The  one  aim,'  he  wrote, 
'  of  the  unsuspecting  painter  is  to  make  his 
man  "stand  out"  from  the  frame — never 
doubting  that,  on  the  contrary,  he  should, 
and  in  truth  absolutely  does,  stand  within 
the  frame — and  at  a  depth  behind  it  equal 
to  the  distance  at  which  the  painter  sees  his 
model.  The  frame  is,  indeed,  the  window 
through  which  the  painter  looks  at  his 
model,  and  nothing  could  be  more  offen- 
sively inartistic  than  this  brutal  attempt  to 
thrust  the  model  on  the  hither-side  of  this 
window  ! '  Here,  as  alwEiys,  it  was  the  just 
limit  of  things  which  Whistler  perceived 
and  respected.  He  never  proposed,  in  a 
picture,  to  give  you  something  which  you 


142       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

could  mistake  for  reality ;  but,  frankly,  a 
picture,  a  thing  which  was  emphatically  not 
nature,  because  it  was  art. 

In  Whistler's  portraits  the  pose  itself  is 
as  much  a  part  of  the  interpretation  as  the 
painting  ;  and  the  quality  of  a  portrait  such 
as  the  Sarasate  is  not  to  be  judged,  as  it 
commonly  is,  by  the  apparent  lack  of  serious- 
ness in  it.  M.  Boldini's  startling  portrait  of 
Whistler  himself  was  an  example  of  the  art 
which  tries  for  this  common  kind  of  success  ; 
there  was  the  likeness,  and  the  shining  hat, 
and  as  much  real  artistic  sense  as  is  con- 
tained in  a  flash-light.  Even  in  Whistler's 
portrait  of  the  Comte  de  Montesquieu,  a 
harlequin  of  letters,  there  was  no  actual 
harlequinade  on  the  part  of  the  painter, 
though  he  may  have  seemed  indulgent  to  it 
in  his  model.  How  much  less  is  there  in  the 
Sarasate,  where  a  genuine  artist,  but  not  a 
profound  artist,  is  seen  making  his  astonish- 
ing appearance,  violin  in  hand,  out  of  dark- 
ness upon  a  stage,  where  he  is  to  be  the 
virtuoso.  Sarasate's  tone  is  a  miracle,  like 
Melba's,  and  he  added  to  this  miracle  of 
technique  a  southern  fire,  which  used  to  go 
electrically  through  his  audience.     He  has 


WHISTLER  143 

his  temperament  and  his  technique,  nothing 
else.  The  man  who  holds  the  violin  in  his 
hands  is  a  child,  pleased  to  please;  not  a 
student  or  a  diviner.  And  Whistler  has 
rendered  all  this,  as  truthfully  as  Watts  has 
rendered  the  very  different  problem  of 
Joachim,  in  perhaps  the  greatest  of  his 
portraits.  Joachim  is  in  the  act  of  playing  ; 
he  bends  his  brows  over  the  music  which  he 
is  studying,  not  reading ;  if  there  is  any 
platform  or  any  audience,  he  is  unconscious 
of  them  ;  he  is  conscious  only  of  Beethoven. 
Note  how  Sarasate  dandles  the  violin.  It  is 
a  child,  a  jewel.  He  is  already  thinking 
of  the  sound,  the  flawless  tone,  not  of 
Beethoven.  Whistler  has  caught  him, 
poised  him,  posed  him,  another  butterfly, 
and  alive.  Imagine  Sarasate  painted  by 
Watts,  or  indeed  in  any  way  but  Whistler's  ! 
There  might  have  been  other  great  pictures, 
but  no  other  such  interpretation. 

To  Whistler,  unlike  Manet,  there  are 
many  things  in  the  world  besides  good 
painting,  and  the  mind  which  sees  through 
his  eyes  is  not,  like  Manet's,  either  'joyful' 
or  'heedless.'  Unlike  most  modern  painters, 
Whistler  does   not  fling  the  truth  at  you 


144       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

stark  naked ;  he  wishes  you  to  know  that 
you  are  looking  at  a  picture,  a  work  of  art, 
and  not  at  yourself  or  your  neighbour  in  a 
mirror.  He  would  feel,  I  think,  that  he  had 
failed  with  you  if  you  did  not  say  :  '  How 
beautiful ! '  before  saying  '  How  true  ! ' 
Nature  can  take  good  care  of  herself,  and 
will  give  you  all  the  reality  you  want, 
whenever  you  want  it ;  but  the  way  of 
looking  at  nature,  which  is  what  art  has  to 
teach  you,  or  to  do  in  your  place,  can  come 
only  from  the  artist.  Look  at  this  corner  of 
the  sea  and  sand,  and  then  at  Whistler's 
picture  of  it.  How  roughly,  crudely,  imper- 
fectly, uninterestingly,  you  had  seen  the 
thing  itself,  until  the  picture  taught  you 
how  to  look.  The  exact  shape  of  the  wave, 
the  exact  tints  of  its  colouring :  had  you 
found  them  out  for  yourself?  Above  all, 
had  you  felt  them  as  you  feel  these  lines  and 
colours  in  the  picture  ?  And  yet  the  picture 
is  only  a  suggestion,  a  moment  out  of  an 
unending  series  of  moments ;  but  the 
moment  has  been  detached  by  art  from  that 
unending  and  unnoted  series,  and  it  gives 
you  the  soul  of  visible  things  in  that 
miraculous  retention  of  a  moment. 


WHISTLER  145 

Whistler  gives  you  the  picture,  then, 
frankly  as  a  picture.  He  gives  it  to  you  for 
its  lines,  its  colours,  as  at  all  events  its 
primary  meaning  for  him ;  a  meaning  in 
itself  almost  or  quite  sufficient,  if  need  be, 
but  capable  of  an  indefinite  extension  or 
deepening.  Unlike  most  men,  he  sees,  sees 
really,  with  a  complete  indifference  to  what 
other  significance  things  may  have,  besides 
their  visible  aspect. 

Only,  for  him,  the  visible  aspect  of  things 
is  the  aspect  of  a  continual  miracle,  and  it 
is  from  this  fresh  sense  of  wonder  that  there 
comes  that  mystery  in  which  he  envelops 
mere  flesh  and  blood,  in  which  there  is  no 
inherent  strangeness.  Some  aspect  of  a 
thing  dreamed  or  seen  in  passing,  and  then 
remembered  in  the  transfiguring  memory  of 
the  brain,  comes  hauntingly  into  all  his 
faces.  The  look  they  show  you  is  not  the 
look  which  their  mirror  sees  every  morning 
and  every  evening.  It  has  come  to  them 
out  of  the  eye  that  sees  them,  as  it  were,  for 
the  first  time.  Until  Whistler  looked  at 
this  young  girl's  face,  it  was  but  a  young 
girl's  face ;  now  it  is  something  besides,  it 
means  all  that  the  brush  has  thought  into 

K 


146       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

it,  it  has  the  weight  and  meaning  and 
mysterious  questioning  of  a  work  of  art. 
Every  work  of  art  is  an  interrogation ; 
these  faces  exist  softly,  like  flowers,  deli- 
cately on  a  canvas ;  they  challenge  us  idly, 
offering  their  most  secret  perfumes  if  we  will 
but  drink  them  in.  They  await  time  in  an 
uneager  patience,  content  to  be  themselves. 
They  have  the  flower's  assurance,  the 
flower's  humility. 

Look  round  a  picture  gallery,  and  you 
will  recognise  a  Whistler  at  once,  and  for 
this  reason  first,  that  it  does  not  come  to 
meet  you.  Most  of  the  other  pictures  seem 
to  cry  across  the  floor  :  '  Come  and  look  at 
us,  see  how  like  something  we  are  ! '  Their 
voices  cross  and  jangle  like  the  voices  of 
rival  sellers  in  a  street  fair.  Each  out-bids 
his  neighbour,  promising  you  more  than 
your  money's  worth.  The  Whistlers  smile 
secretly  in  their  corner,  and  say  nothing. 
They  are  not  really  indifferent ;  they 
watch  and  wait,  and  when  you  come 
near  them  they  seem  to  efface  themselves, 
as  if  they  would  not  have  you  even  see 
them  too  closely.  That  is  all  part  of 
the    subtle    malice   with   which   they    win 


WHISTLER         .  147 

you.  They  choose  you,  you  do  not  choose 
them. 

One  of  the  first  truths  of  art  has  needed 
to  be  rediscovered  in  these  times,  though  it 
has  been  put  into  practice  by  every  great 
artist,  and  has  only  been  seriously  denied  by 
scientific  persons  and  the  inept.  It  has  taken 
new  names,  and  calls  itself  now  '  Symbolism,' 
now  '  Impressionism ' ;  but  it  has  a  single 
thing  to  say,  under  many  forms  :  that  art 
must  never  be  a  statement,  always  an  evoca- 
tion. In  the  art  of  Whistler  there  is  not  so 
much  as  a  momentary  forgetfulness  of  this 
truth,  and  that  is  why,  among  many  works 
of  greater  or  less  relative  merit,  he  has  done 
nothing,  however  literally  slight,  which  is 
not,  so  far  as  it  goes,  done  rightly.  No 
picture  aims  at  anything  else  than  being  the 
evocation  of  a  person,  a  landscape,  some 
colour  or  contour  divined  in  nature,  and 
interpreted  upon  canvas  or  paper.  And  the 
real  secret  of  Whistler,  I  think,  is  this : 
that  he  does  not  try  to  catch  the  accident 
when  an  aspect  becomes  effective,  but  the 
instant  when  it  becomes  characteristically 
beautiful. 

It  is  significant  of  a  certain  simplicity  in 


148       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

his  attitude  towards  his  own  work,  that 
Whistler,  in  all  his  fighting  on  behalf  of 
principles,  has  never  tried  to  do  more  than 
establish  (shall  I  say  ?)  the  correctness  of  his 
grammar.  He  has  never  asked  for  more 
praise  than  should  be  the  reward  of  every 
craftsman  who  is  not  a  bungler.  He  has 
claimed  that,  setting  out  to  do  certain  things, 
legitimate  in  themselves,  he  has  done  them 
in  a  way  legitimate  in  itself.  All  the  rest  he 
is  content  to  leave  out  of  the  question  :  that 
is  to  say,  everything  but  a  few  primary 
qualities,  without  which  no  one  can,  pro- 
perly speaking,  be  a  painter  at  all.  And, 
during  much  of  his  lifetime,  not  even  this 
was  conceded  to  him.  He  wasted  a  little  of 
his  leisure  in  drawing  up  a  catalogue  of 
some  of  the  blunders  of  his  critics,  saying, 
'  Out  of  their  own  mouths  shall  ye  judge 
them.'  Being  without  mercy,  he  called  it 
'  The  Voice  of  a  People.' 

1903,  1905. 


CATHEDRALS 


CATHEDRALS 


CANTERBURY   AND    COLOGNE 

I  CAN  never  realise  that  Cologne  Cathedral 
was  meant  to  be  Catholic,  or  was  built  for  a 
nation  then  Catholic.  It  has  the  chilliness 
of  Protestantism,  all  the  colour  scraped 
off  the  visible  world ;  an  aspiration,  un- 
doubtedly, but  towards  a  colourless  height 
in  heaven.  The  whole  structure  aspires,  not 
only  when  seen  from  without,  with  its 
multitude  of  straight,  thin  lines,  its  climbing 
spires,  but  inside  also,  in  those  slender 
columns,  each  with  its  sheaf  of  reeds  or 
roods,  and  especially  in  the  tall,  rounded 
arch  just  inside  the  main  entrance,  which  is 
like  a  thin  and  lofty  door  in  a  mountain, 
admitting  one  to  some  hidden  regions. 
Here  this  exquisite  door  admits  one  only  to 
a   sort    of  emptiness,  a  vast   nakedness  of 

161 


152       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

space,  frugal  and  fruitless,  out  of  which 
nothing  grows,  in  the  luxuriant  way  of  the 
great  French  Gothic  cathedrals. 

Seen   from   outside,   there   is   indeed   an 
appearance  of  unity,  a  creation  of  mind  in 
stone.    Everywhere  is  one  inflexible  pattern, 
repeated,  magnified,  contracted  ;  every  detail 
seems  to  balance  every  other  detail.     But 
no!  for  the  balance,  if  you  look   carefully, 
is  not  everywhere  preserved.      Those  half- 
windows,  which  are  fitted  into  the  pattern 
because  there  is  no  room  for  the  whole  of 
the  windows,  and  which  are  seen  inside  with 
their  missing    half  parodied   in   stone,   are 
they  not  a  failure  to  balance   perfectly,  a 
kind  of  Procrustes  treatment  of  material  ? 
And  is  any  even  of  the  exterior  detail  really 
good  ?     Are  not  the  figures  a  little  ready- 
made,  the  ornamentation  a  little  character- 
less ?     It  all  tends  to  the  general  effect,  it  is 
true;  and,  seen  at  sufficient  distance,  that 
effect  is,  in  its  own  way,  incomparable.    Even 
then,  would  one  not  gladly  give  this  over- 
powering,   coldly   impressive,    structure  for 
one  of  those  small  old  churches  without  an 
ornament,  the  eleventh  century  Santa  Maria 
in  Capitol,  or  St.   Martinus   down  by  the 


CATHEDRALS  153 

Rhine?  as  one  would  prefer  a  breathing 
fragment  of  folk-song : 

*  0  waly,  waly,  but  love  be  bonnie, 

A  little  while  when  it  is  new ; 
But  when  'tis  old,  it  waxes  cold, 

An'  fades  away  like  morning  dew. 
But  had  I  wist  before  I  kissed 

That  love  had  been  sae  ill  to  win, 
I  had  locked  my  heart  in  a  case  o'  gowd, 

And  pinned  it  wi'  a  siller  pin  : ' 

that,  coming  up  like  a  flower,  to  the  calm 
intellectual  energy  of  Dryden's  'Song  for 
St.  Cecilia's  Day.' 

Inside,  the  decoration  is  somewhat  less 
negligible,  and  it  is  for  tht  most  part  stuck 
on,  and  adheres  frigidly.  If  the  Cathedral 
has  something  in  common  with  Bach's  bare 
stone-work  in  music,  its  ornamentation  is 
certainly  his  also,  with  its  harpsichord  trills 
and  Italian  flourishes.  In  decorating  these 
sober  walls,  pillars,  and  windows,  the  Ger- 
man is  seen  trying  to  come  out  of  his  native 
Protestantism  of  mind,  to  unthaw  a  little, 
and  to  accept  life  in  the  spirit  of  art ;  to  be 
not  only  idealistic,  but  sensuous  as  well. 
He  fails,  and  does  but  prettify  his  severity. 

Yes,  in  all  this  there  is  the  Protestant 


154       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

appeal  of  '  pure  reason.'  Mystery  no  longer 
envelops  the  sacred  rites  ;  there  is  no  shadow 
from  divine  things  ;  here  is  a  daylight  church 
through  which  the  air  blows  freely.  If  there 
is  any  mysticism  built  up  into  these  stones, 
it  is  the  icy  Flemish  mysticism  of  Ruys- 
broeck,  whose  name  one  sees  on  a  station 
not  far  from  Cologne.  '  How  reasonable  is 
God ! '  one  says,  sitting  here  among  these 
cold,  ascending  pillars ;  and  not,  as  in 
Chartres  or  Barcelona,  in  that  dimness 
touched  with  fire :  '  How  terrible  is  God ! ' 
This  cathedral  is  one  of  the  unconsoling 
images  of  eternity,  as  of  an  even  going  on 
of  things  for  ever,  in  a  perpetuation  of  what 
is  level,  tedious,  unbroken  in  time.  I  can 
find  in  it  neither  ecstasy  nor  any  passionate 
kind  of  hope.  It  shelters  no  dreams,  only 
a  calm  certainty,  as  of  a  mind  which  has 
reasoned  itself  sure. 

Canterbury  Cathedral  is  a  palace  made 
for  God,  with  that  '  exuberance  which  is 
beauty.'  Originally,  we  are  told,  a  literal 
palace,  Athelstan's,  and  given  up  by  the 
king  to  Augustine  and  his  monks,  it  has 
still  its  broad  grip  on  the  earth,  and  with 
corners  in  it  for  all  the  curiosities   of  the 


CATHEDRALS  156 

senses,  in  their  dedication  to  the  divine  use. 
Age  has  added  itself  to  age  with  but  little 
sense  of  things  added ;  we  see  a  nation  in 
growth,  from  the  creeping  strength  of  the 
Saxon,  through  the  resolute  strength  of 
the  Norman,  onward  to  an  over -conscious 
energy,  and,  indeed,  finally,  to  our  own 
uncreative  time.  As  you  walk  away  from 
the  remodelled  west  front,  and  follow  the 
long  line  of  the  building,  you  will  see  neither 
repetition  nor  want  of  balance,  but  an 
exuberant  amplitude,  giving  birth  to  in- 
cessantly renewed  forms  of  beauty.  It  is  a 
living  thing,  which  seems  to  develop  in  some 
incalculable  organic  growth.  There  is  vast- 
ness  and  warmth,  a  solidity  which  is 
infinitely  various,  yet  without  caprice. 
Here  we  have  none  of  the  reticences  and 
formalities  of  mere  mind  in  stone  as  in 
Cologne  Cathedral ;  what  we  have  here  is 
properly  soul  in  stone,  with  all  the  beauty 
which  the  soul  can  form  in  its  minister,  the 
body,  as  it  creates  outwards  in  its  own 
image.  The  sense  of  a  rich  and  sober 
intricacy,  which  we  get  from  the  whole 
structure,  satisfies  far  more  than  the  Pro- 
testant,   or    reasonable,    worship    of    God. 


156       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

Inside,  in  that  uninteresting  nave,  which 
reminds  one  for  a  moment  of  Cologne,  we 
get  indeed  something  of  the  Protestant 
chilliness ;  but  with  the  choir  and  side- 
chapels  warmth  returns,  and,  as  we  go 
down  into  the  crypt,  we  find  again  that 
amplitude,  that  severe  richness,  which 
the  outside  had  shown  us.  There  is  the 
same  growth,  the  same  vital  expansion,  as 
the  great  church  sends  its  roots  down  into 
the  earth,  burrowing  there,  and  branching 
this  way  and  that. 

The  crypt  is  the  work  of  gnomes,  or  of 
giants  of  the  under-earth,  and  it  reminds 
me,  in  its  huge,  heavy,  subterranean  beauty, 
of  the  buried  cistern  of  Yeri-Batan-Serai  at 
Constantinople.  The  Normans  built  like 
soldiers,  making  citadels,  but  with  a  large, 
immovable  sense  of  proportion,  and  an  un- 
swerving sureness  in  their  strokes  of  the 
axe,  like  unerring  blows  in  fight.  Outside, 
in  the  Norman  tower,  with  its  delicate  pre- 
cision of  not  too  rigid  pattern,  its  rich  and 
exquisite  severity,  and  in  the  porch  and 
staircase  leading  to  the  pilgrims'  hall,  we 
see  to  what  elegance  that  hard  strength 
could  refine  itself.     But  in  the  crypt  there 


CATHEDRALS  157 

is  only  force,  and  the  solemn  playfulness  of 
force  in  its  childhood. 

In  Canterbury  Cathedral  there  are  many 
separable  beauties  :  the  thirteenth  century 
windows,  with  their  sombre  purple,  their 
naive  drama  of  miracles  and  parables  ;  the 
fifteenth  century  cloisters,  the  aisles  of  a 
stone  forest,  in  which  the  branches  meet 
and  intertwine  overhead ;  the  high,  wintry 
tower  of  Bell  Harry,  on  which  time  and 
weather  have  worked  to  better  purpose 
than  the  '  new  brushes '  with  which  the 
inside  of  the  nave  and  choir  are  scrubbed 
down  four  times  a  year.  But  where  I  find 
the  fundamental  contrast  with  Cologne  is 
precisely  in  the  whole  temper,  which  I 
would  call  genius,  of  the  building  itself,  in 
contrast  with  the  careful  and  persistent 
talent  of  the  builders  of  Cologne.  These 
followed  a  pattern,  century  after  century, 
and  they  have  left  a  problem  solved.  In 
the  English  cathedral  I  find  what  cannot  be 
made  to  order,  an  instinct,  the  instinct  of 
age  after  age,  bringing  its  own  qualities, 
letting  accident  have  its  way  with  things, 
and  yet  never  losing  that  essential  harmony, 
which  is  really  a  kind  of  soul,  not  a  pattern. 


158       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

II 

OUR  LADY  OF  AMIENS 

Within  and  without,  the  Cathedral  church 
of  Our  Lady  of  Amiens  is  like  a  precious 
casket,  adorned  for  some  priceless  jewel. 
Every  part  has  the  finish  of  a  miniature, 
and  there  is  something  actually  dainty  in 
this  vast  church,  in  which  a  singular  pre- 
cision in  its  proportions  never  becomes  a 
mechanical  regularity,  is  never  cold,  but 
retains  always  the  heat  of  that  first  '  excite- 
ment' out  of  which  it  was  first  created. 
'The  Pointed  style  at  Amiens,'  says  Pater 
subtly,  '  is  full  of  excitement.'  Here,  in  the 
construction  of  what  is  certainly  'I'eglise 
ogivale  par  excellence,'  unity  has  been 
attained  without  any  of  those  losses  or  com- 
promises by  which  that  quality  is  too  often 
sought  at  the  expense  of  exuberance,  an 
ample  vitality.  The  fa9ade  is  set  up  against 
the  sky  like  a  great  frontispiece  of  images 
to  a  printed  book,  the  book  which  Huskin 
has  called  the  Bible  of  Amiens.  It  is  an 
immense  stone  page,  as  if  engraved  on  the 
sky,  and  it  is  at  once  severe  and  sumptuous. 


CATHEDRALS  159 

It  is  alive  with  rich  ornament,  full  of  gran- 
deur, and  with  a  kind  of  heavy  sweetness  in 
its  almost  tropical  stone  vegetation.  At 
the  sides  and  back,  flying  buttresses  leap 
out  and  seem  to  cross  in  the  air,  among 
those  long  straight  pillars  (one  might  almost 
call  them)  that  are  all  the  wall  between 
window  and  window ;  and  these  narrow 
strips  of  wall  and  these  slender  buttresses 
are  full  of  nervous  elegance.  The  front,  too, 
has  daintiness,  in  its  exuberance  of  vitality, 
tempered  to  a  pattern,  and  yet  seeming  as 
spontaneous  as  a  caprice.  It  is  as  if  the 
plan  had  been  living  from  its  first  sketch  in 
the  brain  of  Robert  de  Luzarches,  and  had 
grown  organically,  statues,  reliefs,  orna- 
ments all  comiug  into  their  places  alive 
already.  Inside,  we  see  the  Pointed  Gothic 
in  its  supreme  elegance.  The  whole  church 
gives  itself  to  you  from  every  point,  open  to 
the  eye  as  it  is  open  to  the  light.  There  is 
an  immense  cheerfulness  in  this  daylight 
church,  itself  so  warm  with  light,  the  white 
stone  as  if  just  a  little  browned  by  the  sun. 
It  is  a  daylight  church  in  a  way  very 
different  from  that  of  Cologne.  Here  it  is 
not  abstract  reason  to  which  a  chilly  light 


160       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

bears  witness,  but  rather  the  whole  temple, 
alive  with  natural  life  in  its  very  lines, 
its  coils  of  stone  flowers  that  link  pillar  to 
pillar  in  an  unbroken  garland,  lies  open  to 
God,  without  reticence,  grateful  for  exist- 
ence. The  slender  columns  go  up  in 
straight,  thin  lines,  widely  spaced,  with 
great  breadths  of  clear  windows  between 
column  and  column.  The  roof  of  the  tran- 
sept is  nearly  as  high  as  the  roof  of  the 
nave,  and  its  groinings,  seen  through  the 
pointed  arches  as  you  walk,  transpose  them- 
selves into  a  series  of  delicate  patterns,  full 
of  refreshing  and  not  surprising  novelty. 
There  is  but  little  decoration,  but,  in  that 
decoration,  every  touch  is  a  refining  of  some 
structural  line,  a  clothing  of  some  nakedness 
of  space.  You  are  conscious  of  nothing  but 
symmetry,  and  of  that  calm,  delighted  sense 
of  satisfaction  which  symmetry  brings  with 
it ;  and  then,  little  by  little,  you  distinguish, 
with  increasing  pleasure,  many  separate  and 
always  subsidiary  beauties. 

Among  these,  nothing  is  more  curious 
than  the  painted  stone  carvings  on  the  walls 
of  the  choir.  Those  on  the  south  side,  done 
in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  with  a  fine 


CATHEDRALS  161 

dramatic  sense  of  movement  and  grouping, 
are  far  less  interesting  than  the  fifteenth 
century  scenes  from  the  life  and  death  of 
John  the  Baptist,  on  the  north  side.  The 
painting  is  mostly  in  golds  and  reds  and 
blues,  now  dulled  to  a  finer  than  their 
original  colour.  There  is  always  an  elabo- 
rate background  of  turreted  castles,  with 
people  looking  out  of  the  windows ;  people 
sitting  at  table,  the  cloth  falling  in  stiff 
folds,  the  loaf  of  bread,  the  plates  on  the 
table.  The  last  three  divisions  represent 
the  dance  of  the  daughter  of  Herodias,  with 
fine  invention.  In  the  first  Salome  has  just 
ended  her  dance ;  Herod  and  Herodias  sit 
at  the  table  behind  her,  and  she  stands 
fingering  a  long  curl,  smiling  and  as  yet  un- 
conscious, indifferent ;  a  dainty,  naive  little 
person,  like  the  Salome  of  Lucas  Cranach, 
cruel  through  indifference  ;  and  she  catches 
sight  of  a  man  bringing  a  dish  to  the  table  ; 
he  has  something  on  a  platter,  and  she  says, 
'Give  me  presently  the  head  of  John  the 
Baptist,  on  a  platter.'  By  her  side  a 
monkey,  squatting  on  the  ground,  looks  up 
at  her  with  a  pained,  half  lascivious  leer. 
She   wears   a  girdle    from   which   a  heavy 

L 


162       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

chain  falls  down  the  front  of  her  gold- 
flowered  dress ;  the  blue  lining  is  seen  as 
she  lifts  it  coquettishly.  In  the  second 
division  you  see  John  beheaded,  the  red 
veins  of  the  neck  fallen  forward  where  the 
head  has  been  severed.  Salome  stands  by 
quietly,  waiting  ;  but  already  consciousness 
of  what  she  has  done  begins  to  come  into 
her  face,  as  the  headsman,  looking  at  her 
queerly,  like  the  monkey,  in  another  inter- 
rogation, sets  the  head  down  on  the  platter 
which  she  holds  in  her  hands.  In  the  third, 
Herod  and  Herodias  sit  at  table,  with  the 
head  before  them  on  a  platter,  and  Herodias 
thrusts  a  knife  into  the  forehead  above  the 
left  eye.  In  the  foreground  Salome  faints, 
falling  aside  as  if  overpowered  with  some 
physical  terror,  and  you  would  scarcely 
recognise  her  changed  face,  but  for  the  orna- 
ments beside  the  ears  and  the  chains  about 
the  neck.  Her  fingers,  as  her  hands  hang, 
are  rigid ;  in  her  convulsed  face,  lines  like 
old  age  tighten  her  plump  chin  into  the 
fixed  wrinkles  of  an  old  woman,  and  her 
smooth  forehead  is  drawn  upward  into  a  deep 
furrow  by  the  movement  which  sets  her 
blue   eyes   horribly   wide    open.     This    naif 


CATHEDRALS  163 

sculptor  has  rendered  his  legend,  not  as  a 
legend,  but  as  a  piece  of  actual  drama,  and 
with  a  subtle  psychology. 

And  throughout,  in  all  the  sculpture  of 
the  exterior,  there  is  an  astonishing  sense  of 
reality,  to  which  beauty  comes  by  accident, 
or  inevitably,  in  the  attempt  to  render  life. 
In  the  life-sized  figures  along  the  fa9ade  the 
aim  is  always  at  character.  The  drapery  is 
generalised,  but  not  the  face,  which  has 
always  something  to  say,  some  solemn  or 
smiling  message  in  its  rough-hewn,  as  if 
ascetic  lines.  And  they  say  distinctly  what 
they  wish  to  say,  these  sculptors,  not  dis- 
tracted by  more  than  a  single  intention, 
knowing  very  well  how  to  express  an  emo- 
tion or  render  an  attitude. 

Lower  than  these  statues,  running  round 
the  entire  base  of  the  front,  and  following 
the  curve  of  each  doorway,  there  is  a  double 
row  of  quatrefoils,  each  containing  a  little 
scene  out  of  the  Bible  ;  and  the  perfectly 
sure  and  successful  art  with  which  they  are 
done  is  a  form  of  art  which  survives  to-day 
only  in  children's  toys.  They  were  addressed 
to  similar  spectators,  and  they  have  the 
same  quaint  faithfulness  to  a  child's  sense  of 


164       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

reality.  One  sees  Jonah  as  he  steps  com- 
fortably out  of  the  whale's  widely  opened 
mouth  and  plants  his  foot  firmly  on  its  back 
in  the  midst  of  the  sea ;  one  sees  the  good 
man  sitting  under  his  own  vine  and  fig-tree ; 
people  at  work,  dancing,  embracing,  rowing, 
building,  lying  in  bed  ;  and  the  lamps  hang 
over  the  bed,  the  boots  are  laid  neatly  on 
the  floor  :  nothing  that  would  be  really  seen 
there  is  forgotten  in  this  faithful  setting 
down  of  what  must  have  happened.  The 
animals,  a  delicious  hedgehog,  apes,  a  crab, 
are  done  quite  literally  after  nature ;  and 
there  are  all  sorts  of  quaint  symbols,  as  like 
nature  as  they  can  be,  such  as  the  water 
which  is  poured  out  of  a  vessel  in  solid 
trickles  of  wavy  lines,  that  reach  the  ground 
and  turn  there. 

And  in  the  grotesques,  which  writhe  over 
the  entire  front,  and  are  seen  close  at  hand 
under  each  of  the  full-length  statues  about 
the  doorways,  I  find  the  easy,  successful, 
because  simple  and  truthful,  achievement  of 
what  the  Germans  have  tried  and  failed  to 
do  in  their  grotesque  art.  Each  is  conceived 
as  the  tortured  evil  chafing  against  the 
virtue  which  he  is  condemned  to  support, 


CATHEDRALS  165 

and  eacli  monster  in  pain  has  his  natural 
unexaggerated  movement  :  the  movement 
to  get  away,  to  lift  up  the  vp-eight  above 
him,  to  at  least  wriggle  forward  and  look 
up.  They  are  the  flesh  and  the  devil,  kept 
under  by  the  saints,  but,  none  the  less,  with 
their  place  and  form  in  the  world,  of  which 
this  church  is  an  epitome.  And  it  is  with 
a  fine,  significant  sense  of  imaginative  design 
that  the  builder  of  this  the  greatest  house 
made  with  hands  has  set,  high  up,  at  the 
edge  of  a  parapet,  a  row  of  winged  monsters, 
leaning  over  like  great  carrion  birds  that 
have  swooped  down  there  in  their  flight 
across  space. 

Ill 

ST.    ETIENNE    OF   BOURGES 

In  Bourges,  a  little  white  town  of  turning 
streets,  heavy  with  quiet,  set  in  the  midst 
of  broad  and  fertile  plains,  everything  is  old, 
subdued,  placidly  and  venerably  provincial. 
It  has  the  settled  repose  of  an  old  cathedral 
city ;  streets  without  noise,  windows  open 
against   the   light,    everywhere   little   open 


166       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

squares,  little  formal  gardens,  over  which 
the  tree- tops  almost  meet,  with  just  a  part- 
ing of  blue  sky  above  green  alleys.  The 
cathedral  is  set  in  its  midst,  on  a  hill  to 
which  all  ways  climb.  Seen  from  a  distance, 
it  is  formidable,  and  seems  to  brood  over  the 
town  as  if  weighing  upon  it,  like  an  oddly- 
shaped  rock  or  mountain.  Seen  from  near, 
it  imposes  by  its  immense  breadth,  raised 
higher  than  the  ground  before  it  by  a  broad 
flight  of  low  steps.  There  are  five  door- 
ways, three  of  the  thirteenth  century,  and 
two  towers,  of  unequal  height,  in  one  of 
which  one  sees  the  plain,  wholly  structural 
building  of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  in 
the  other,  which  first  attracts  the  eye,  the 
more  obtrusive  decoration,  all  in  spikes  and 
spires,  and  the  weaker  structure,  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  The  window  under  the 
rose  of  slender,  veined  stone-work  has  been 
walled  up ;  most  of  the  full-length  statues 
which  once  stood  around  the  doorways  are 
gone,  and  the  six  that  remain  on  one  side  of 
the  central  doorway  are  all  headless.  The 
fa9ade  has  neither  the  harmony  nor  the 
luxurious  detail  of  Amiens  but,  especially 
when  seen  at  night,  with  the  after  sunset 


CATHEDRALS  167 

light  upon  it,  or  stretched  upon  the  sky  of 
moonhght,  the  windows  blackened  and  the 
grey  stone  turned  white,  the  breadth  of  it 
becomes  enormous,  fills  the  sky,  and  what  is 
plain,  unimaginative,  merely  adequate  and 
explicit  in  the  sides  and  buttresses,  becomes 
delicate,  becomes  living,  under  that  softening 
of  light.  Seen  from  the  terrace  of  the 
Archbishop's  garden,  at  the  back,  one  dis- 
tinguishes the  fine,  original  symmetry  of  the 
choir,  with  its  three-fold  curve,  each  curve, 
as  it  rises  a  story,  tightened  more  closely 
about  the  building.  And,  as  you  walk 
round,  you  see  the  two  great  side  doorways, 
with  their  rigid,  almost  Assyrian  sculpture, 
with  winged  bulls  and  formal  squares  and 
patterns  woven  and  plaited  in  the  stone. 

The  sculpture  of  the  facade  is  not  for  the 
most  part  so  fine  or  so  naively  harmonious  as 
at  Amiens,  but  the  tympanum  of  the  central 
doorway  contains  a  '  Last  Judgment,'  which 
is  full  of  grotesque  vigour.  Startled  folk 
rise  up  naked  and  with  a  sudden  sense  of 
shame,  out  of  their  tombs,  pushiog  up  the 
stone  lids  of  their  coffins,  and  stepping  out 
eagerly  with  stiff  unaccustomed  limbs  ;  they 
turn    towards   heaven,    or    hell,   which   are 


168       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

represented  above  by  angels  who  receive  the 
saints,  clothed,  into  the  gate  of  heaven, 
while  triumphing  devils  thrust  the  sinners, 
naked,  along  the  road  to  the  bottomless 
pit.  One  devil  has  a  second  face  in  his 
stomach,  like  the  monsters  of  the  Cologne 
school  of  painters  ;  another  has  a  tail  which 
ends  in  a  dog's  head,  reaching  forward 
through  his  legs  and  biting  the  legs  of  a  man 
in  front.  Devils  with  faces  full  of  horrible 
mirth  lift  up  men  and  women  on  their 
shoulders,  and  stamp  them  down  into  a 
boiling  cauldron ;  yon  see  the  flames  under- 
neath, and  two  devils  blowing  the  bellows. 
Two  toads  climb  up  outside  the  cauldron ; 
one  is  in  the  act  of  crawling  into  the  mouth 
of  a  man,  while  the  other  sucks  at  the  breast 
of  a  woman.  There  is  a  kind  of  cheerful 
horror  in  all  these  figures  in  pain  ;  they  are 
rendered  calmly,  without  emotion,  without 
pity.  They  and  the  saints  have  the  same 
quite  credible  existence ;  they  are  carved 
there  as  if  by  act  of  faith,  and  are  not  so  poig- 
nantly human  as  to  trouble  the  living  more 
than  a  text  of  the  Bible,  read  out  in  Latin. 

The   sculpture  of  the  Middle  Ages  is  a 
kind  of  negation :  it  is  the  art  of  the  body 


CATHEDRALS  169 

practised  by  artists  who  hold  the  body  in 
contempt,  and  it  aims  at  rendering  the  soul 
without  doing  honour  to  the  body.  These 
sculptors,  with  their  imperfect  command  of 
the  only  means  by  which  the  soul  can  be 
made  visible,  may  seem  to  become  only  more 
exterior  as  they  strain  after  a  more  ascetic 
ideal.  At  Bourges  there  is  less  than  at 
Amiens  of  that  fine,  homely  feeling  for 
character  in  faces ;  the  body  counts  for 
more,  and  the  body  is  ashamed  of  nakedness 
and  uncomely  without  a  covering. 

Outside,  the  cathedral  impresses  by  its 
mass,  its  breadth,  the  immense  emphasis  of 
its  five  doorways  set  side  by  side,  the  almost 
eastern  strangeness  of  those  two  other  door- 
ways, in  which  some  of  the  figures  are  taken 
from  an  older  church  of  the  eleventh  century. 
It  has  weight,  solemnity,  with  something 
incalculable  in  its  separate  effects,  though 
with  none  of  the  daintiness  of  Amiens.  But 
inside,  all  that  is  exquisite  because  vital  in 
its  symmetry  becomes  at  once  visible. 
Unity,  ease,  sequence,  elegance,  are  the 
qualities  of  this  naked  interior,  in  which  the 
long  and  naked  alleys  have  the  harmonious 
beauty  of  abstract  line.     From  the  western 


170       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

door  one  looks  uninterruptedly  through  the 
church  to  the  windows  behind  the  choir ; 
the  choir  is  no  more  than  a  little  space  as  if 
temporarily  railed  ofif  from  the  nave  ;  and  on 
each  side  a  row  of  slender,  wholly  un- 
decorated  pillars  drapes  the  nave  as  if  with 
long  straight  hangings.  A  double  line  of 
aisles  follows  the  whole  length  of  the 
church,  curving  delicately  around  the  choir ; 
the  lines  dwindle,  curve,  disappear,  almost 
mysteriously.  Their  evasiveness  is  like  a 
last,  less  definite  suggestion,  completing 
what  is  frank  and  precise  in  the  bare  elegance 
of  the  structure.  The  aisles  surround  the 
church  like  arcades ;  the  low  inner  one,  which 
remains  always  dim,  while  the  nave  and  the 
outer  aisles  are  open  to  travelling  rays  of 
light,  has  a  touch  of  mystery  entirely  absent 
from  the  daylight  church  of  Amiens.  The 
stone  tracery  of  the  windows  is  unusually 
fine  and  elaborate ;  the  rose- window,  seen 
from  the  east,  is  pale,  like  a  star  appearing 
at  the  end  of  an  alley  of  trees.  Here, 
windows  are  an  accessory,  and  not,  as  in 
Amiens,  a  part  of  the  structure,  which  has 
been  thought  out  in  stone,  and  exists  with 
an  incomparable  simplicity. 


CATHEDRALS  171 

And  yet  the  windows  at  Bourges  are  the 
finest  windows  in  France.  This  thirteenth 
century  glass  has  at  once  grandeur  and 
subtlety ;  it  glows  like  a  flower-garden  in 
which  all  the  flowers  are  jewels,  and  it  is  set 
in  patterns  of  wheels  and  trefoils  and  circles, 
and  in  patterns  made  up  of  the  mingling  of 
many  shapes.  Even  from  outside,  when  the 
sun  touches  them,  the  windows  begin  to 
glow  between  their  leads  and  lines  of  stone. 
There  are  windows  like  tapestries,  windows 
that  are  curtains  against  the  world,  windows 
as  if  the  wall  had  opened  suddenly  upon 
some  paradise.  Beyond  the  choir  the  naked 
greyness  of  the  wall  flames  into  fiery  purple, 
into  sombre  reds,  into  a  royal  pomp  of  blue 
and  crimson.  The  oldest  of  the  windows 
are  in  fixed  shapes,  into  which  little  naive 
pictures  are  framed,  each  separate  in  design, 
combined  into  patterns  by  the  leads  which 
divide  them  into  masses  of  simple  colour. 
In  other  windows  the  design  is  allowed  to 
flow,  after  its  own  pattern,  like  that  of  a 
picture ;  and  with  what  admirable  sense  of 
design,  with  what  subtleties  of  colour ! 
Certainly  the  glass  workers  who  made  these 
windows  were  finer  artists  than  the  workers 


172       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

in  stone  who  made  even  the  most  vivid  of 
the  exterior  sculptures.  And  their  work 
Hves,  with  a  renewed  life,  and  in  all  its  fresh- 
ness, day  by  day.  At  early  morning,  when 
the  fagade  is  not  warmed  and  the  rose- 
window  fades  like  a  flower,  the  windows 
about  the  choir  re- awaken.  All  that  was 
sombre  in  them  has  gone,  or  remains  only 
to  heighten  their  exaltation.  Underneath, 
priests  say  mass,  and  the  people  turn  up  their 
faces  as  if  to  worship  the  sun  coming  out  of 
the  east. 


1903. 


THE  DECAY  OF  CRAFTSMANSHIP 
IN  ENGLAND 


THE  DECAY  OF  CRAFTSMANSHIP 
IN  ENGLAND 


In  the  year  1903  I  went  several  times  to 
the  seventh  exhibition  of  the  Arts  and 
Crafts  Exhibition  Society,  and  what  I  saw 
set  me  thinking  about  the  possibilities  of 
craftsmanship  in  England ;  and  I  asked 
myself:  Does  good  craftsmanship  exist 
among  us  any  longer,  and,  if  not,  why  not  ? 
and,  if  so,  where  is  it  to  be  seen  ? 

On  entering  the  New  Gallery,  and  strolling 
from  room  to  room,  my  eye  was  shocked 
and  distracted  by  a  mingling  of  what  was 
tawdry  with  what  was  trivial.  Colour  blazed, 
writhing  dragons  of  form  clawed  at  me  on 
all  sides ;  nothing  allured  or  persuaded  or 
stood  aloof,  content  to  be  alone  ;  the  voices  of 
rival  eccentricities  cried  down  each  other,  in 
a  hubbub  of  self-praise.     I  felt  as  if  I  had 


176 


176       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

found  my  way  into  some  monstrous  market, 
in  which  the  fruits  and  vegetables  were  all 
of  gold  and  fiery  stones,  and  the  stalls 
asked  to  be  admired,  and  the  nails  that 
fastened  plank  to  plank  said :  Look  at  us, 
we  too  are  Art.  Everything  was  dead,  and 
had  a  dull  glitter,  like  the  scales  of  a  dead 
fish.  Human  figures,  grimacing  in  some 
unearthly  way,  stared  at  me  from  the  walls, 
without  human  resemblance,  and  yet  left 
brutally  naked  of  the  new  body  of  art. 
Spiders'  webs  of  chains,  in  which  finikin 
stones  were  meshed,  trailed  across  the 
interior  of  glass  cases,  among  spectral  rings 
and  lurid  enamels.  I  was  in  the  midst  of  a 
tangle  of  crawling  and  stunted  and  desperately 
self-assertive  things.  I  turned  this  way  and 
that  in  the  labyrinth,  bewildered  and  un- 
happy ;  I  had  come  to  look  for  pure  design, 
for  mastery  and  subtlety  of  line,  and  I  found 
no  design,  only  ornament ;  no  sense  of  line, 
only  of  angle  and  excrescence. 

As  I  came  away  from  the  gallery  I  thought 
of  an  exhibition  of  old  silver  which  I  had 
seen  lately  at  the  Fine  Art  Society's,  and  I 
recalled  some  knives,  some  spoons,  and  some 
*  vase-shaped  dishes  with  covers  '  of  English 


THE  DECAY  OF  CRAFTSMANSHIP    177 

make  (dating  from  Charles  i.  to  George  iii.) 
which  I  had  seen  there,  along  with  scarcely 
better  Dutch  and  French  work.  They  had 
no  other  beauty  but  that  of  line :  what 
other  beauty  can  a  silver  spoon  have  ?  But 
they  had  given  me  a  sense  of  perfect  satis- 
faction ;  I  had  asked  no  more  of  them  than 
they  had  to  give  me  :  they  had  come  into  a 
quiet,  undefeatable  existence  as  beautiful 
things,  made  for  use,  and  perfectly  adapted 
for  their  use,  but  with  that  beauty  as  a  sort 
of  soul  in  a  body.  To  turn  from  this  reticent 
old  silver,  so  discreet  and  gentlemanly,  to 
these  modern  toys,  like  vulgar  women  in 
aesthetic  clothes  which  neither  fitted  nor 
disguised  their  bodies,  was  to  force  upon 
myself  the  question :  Has  the  sense  of  beauty, 
the  sense  of  proportion,  gone  completely  out 
of  the  modern  English  mind  ?  Here  were 
these  rooms  full  of  chairs  and  cabinets  and 
chimney-corners  and  stuffs  and  jewels,  all 
made  for  effect,  with  a  deliberate  aim  at 
making  something  which  would  look  beauti- 
ful in  a  house ;  and  with  all  this  effort,  and 
the  democratic  banner  of  Mr.  Walter  Crane 
flying,  and  the  encouragement  of  critics  and 
buyers   and    a    plentiful    and    appreciative 

M 


178       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

public,  we  are  only  so  much  the  farther 
away  from  the  plain  man  who  made  the 
silver  spoon  to  please  himself,  and  has  got 
no  advertisement  out  of  it  yet. 

For  fifteen  years  the  Society  of  Arts  and 
Crafts  has  done  its  best  to  foster  and  to 
reward  the  making  of  beautiful  things  for 
every-day  use.  It  has  had  from  time  to 
time  beautiful  things  in  its  exhibitions. 
But  now,  after  fifteen  years  of  a  sort  of 
propaganda,  after  this  persistent  search  for 
the  craftsman,  the  craftsman  has  exhausted 
himself  by  his  few  little  successes,  and  we 
see  him  relapsing  into  a  kind  of  manufacturer 
of  '  art  nouveau '  under  another  name,  a 
follower  of  the  violently  effective  German 
methods  with  none  of  the  disastrous  German 
energy,  a  feeble  dilettante  in  bric-a-brac. 
What  is  called  the  movement  of  Morris  was 
literally  Morris's  vivid  personal  movement ; 
it  began,  and  all  but  ended,  in  himself ;  and 
in  many  ways  was  an  interesting  expression  of 
an  extraordinarily  interesting  temperament, 
rather  than  a  thing  purely  admirable  in 
itself,  or  at  all  safe  as  a  model  for  others. 
We  have  had  no  living  tradition  for  our 
craftsmen  to  work  in ;  Morris  had  to  resusci- 


THE  DECAY  OF  CRAFTSMANSHIP   179 

tate  one,  and  the  Committee  of  the  Arts 
and  Crafts  has  tried  to  piece  one  together ; 
but  neither  endeavour  has  taken  root ;  we 
have  merely  a  certain  number  of  good 
things  designed  and  made  by  Morris,  and  a 
certain  number  of  good  things  designed  and 
made  since. 

Those  responsible  for  a  public  exhibition 
are  no  doubt  very  much  at  the  mercy  of 
their  exhibitors.  You  cannot  fill  a  gallery 
with  masterpieces  if  no  masterpiece  come 
knocking  at  the  door.  But  at  least  it  is  the 
business  of  a  committee  to  enforce  some 
statute  of  limitation  ;  at  the  worst,  to  close 
its  doors,  and  to  admit  honestly :  We  have 
nothing  worth  showing  to  show.  Now,  can 
it  really  be  said  that  this  seventh  exhibition 
of  the  Arts  and  Crafts  has  justified  its 
existence  by  the  merit  of  a  sufficient  number 
of  its  contents  ?  A  few  good  books  and 
bindings,  a  pendant  or  a  necklace,  a  cabinet 
or  two,  a  few  woodcuts  :  is  this  enough  good 
work  for  an  exhibition  of  625  articles  ? 
And  of  these,  scarcely  one  is  to  be  accepted 
without  reserve.  The  writing-cabinet  and 
music-cabinet,  in  which  natural  woods  are 
set  together  in  patterns  of  their  own,  have 


180       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

timid  locks  and  clumsy  feet ;  the  woodcuts, 
powerful  as  they  are,  are  not  wholly  original 
in  manner ;  the  few  good  bits  of  jewellery 
have  more  negative  than  positive  merits. 
The  preface  to  the  catalogue  quotes  with 
satisfaction  the  speech  of '  the  representative 
of  Sweden  upon  the  International  Jury 
which  assembled  at  Turin  to  award  the 
diplomas,  medals,  and  prizes'  at  last  year's  In- 
ternational Exhibition  of  Modern  Decorative 
Art;  and  this  gentleman  speaks  with  enthu- 
siasm of  '  this  new  ideal  of  style  and  beauty 
of  line  and  colours  which  distinguishes  our 
epoch,  and  which  we  call — not  without  pride 
— the  new  art.'  And  he  points  to  England 
as  the  origin  of  '  art  nouveau,'  which,  as  I 
have  said,  has  come  home  to  roost  there. 
Was  it  for  this  result  that  the  Arts  and 
Crafts  first  opened  its  doors  1  to  encourage 
a  structureless  deformation  of  line  and  a 
meaningless  degradation  of  colour  which  has 
now  appropriately  found  a  place  among  the 
scenic  properties  of  Drury  Lane  ?  It  is 
towards  this,  at  any  rate,  that  the  Arts  and 
Crafts  is  tending,  and  by  so  doing  it  is 
ranging  itself  definitely  on  the  wrong  side, 
on  the  side  of  the  mob ;  it  is   helping   to 


THE  DECAY  OF  CRAFTSMANSHIP    181 

build  up  false  ideals  in  the  minds  of  people 
who  will  not  be  able  to  correct  them  by- 
looking  at  good  things  in  the  South  Ken- 
sington Museum,  or  the  Mus^e  de  Cluny, 
or  the  Poldi  -  Pezzoli,  or  the  Niirnberg 
Museum. 

Many  of  the  people  who  go  to  such  an 
exhibition  as  this  of  the  Arts  and  Crafts  are 
simple  people  who  are  quite  anxious  to  know 
what  is  beautiful  and  what  is  not.  They 
come  honestly  to  improve  their  taste,  as 
the  phrase  is ;  they  will  not  like  most  of 
what  they  see,  but  they  will  try  to  like  it. 
They  will  come  away,  not  only  without 
having  improved  their  taste,  but  having 
spoilt  a  little  of  the  innocence  of  their 
ignorance. 

II 

No,  it  is  certain  that  we  have  outlived 
the  age  of  the  craftsman,  the  age  in  which 
beauty  was  the  natural  attendant  on  use. 
If  you  pass  from  a  Greek  statue  to  the  con- 
tents of  a  Greek  woman's  toilet-table,  or 
indeed  to  the  pots  and  pans  of  her  kitchen, 
you  will  be  conscious  of  no  such   sudden 


182       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

change  as  in  passing  from  a  modern  host's 
private  picture-gallery  into  the  bedroom 
where  you  are  to  sleep.  The  saucepan  and 
the  hair-pins  belong  to  the  same  atmosphere 
as  the  statue,  they  were  made  with  the 
same  grave  simplicity.  It  had  not  yet 
occurred  to  the  civilised  world  that  it  was 
possible  to  do  without  beauty  in  the  things 
which  one  handled  every  day.  And  that 
strict,  natural  union  of  use  and  beauty 
kept  extravagance  out  of  things  made  for 
a  definite  purpose.  The  appropriate  fulfill- 
ing of  the  purpose  was  what  the  craftsmen 
aimed  at. 

Nowadays  we  have  our  Art  and  we  have 
our  Utility,  and  if  ever  we  attempt  to  unite 
them  it  is  in  some  such  unnatural  bondage 
as  in  many  of  these  inconvenient  articles 
now  on  exhibition.  The  beauty,  if  there  is 
any,  is  stuck  on  to  some  corner  of  the  thing, 
is  not  an  outcome  of  the  nature  of  the  thing. 
Our  artists,  accustomed  to  the  painting  of 
detachable  pictures,  to  be  fixed  in  a  frame, 
and  carried  about  from  place  to  place,  are 
unable  to  conceive  of  this  adjustment  of 
beauty  to  use,  this  forgotten  relation  of 
cause  to  effect.    We  see  them  bringing  their 


THE  DECAY  OF  CRAFTSMANSHIP    183 

minds  to  this  false  problem :  how  to  escape 
from  the  limitations  of  the  thing  as  it  is,  as 
its  purpose  requires  it  to  be,  how  to  bring 
some  new  element  into  it.  They  cannot 
bring  their  minds  to  the  right  focus,  and  so 
the  shapes  get  twisted. 

In  this  matter,  as  in  all  others,  we  have 
become  specialists ;  the  craftsman  is  no 
longer  an  artist,  and  the  artist  can  no  longer 
be  a  craftsman.  What  we  see  in  the  Arts 
and  Crafts,  in  these  ambitious  attempts,  is 
only  another  symptom  of  what  we  see  in  all 
the  shops  in  London.  The  most  difficult 
thing  to  get  in  London  is  a  piece  of  plain 
carpet,  without  any  pattern  on  it  whatever, 
and  when  you  have  found  it  you  will  gener- 
ally have  to  get  it  dyed  to  the  colour  you 
want.  A  piece  of  plain  wall-paper  to  match 
it  will  be  the  next  most  difiBcult  thing  to 
get ;  and  for  both  these  things  you  will 
have  to  pay  much  more  than  you  would  pay 
for  a  carpet  or  a  wall-paper  covered  with 
hideous  patterns.  Surely  the  mere  printing, 
not  to  say  inventing,  of  these  patterns  must 
cost  money ;  why,  then,  cannot  a  cheaper 
and  a  less  objectionable  thing  be  ojBfered  to 
you  without  them  ?     For  this  reason,  say 


184       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

the  shopkeepers,  that  only  one  person 
out  of  a  thousand  will  buy  it.  That  the 
pattern  is  a  bad  pattern,  no  one  seems 
to  mind ;  there  must  be  some  scrawl  for  the 
money. 

I  do  not  know  how  far  the  bad  craftsman 
persuades  the  public,  or  how  far  the  public 
gives  his  directions  to  the  bad  craftsman. 
But  judging  by  women's  fashions,  and  the 
meekness  with  which  a  woman  will  make 
herself  like  all  the  other  women  of  this 
season  and  unlike  herself  and  all  the  women 
of  last  season,  I  imagine  that  the  public  will 
accept  whatever  is  given  to  it  in  sufficient 
quantity  and  with  sufficient  assurance. 
Then  it  is  really  the  craftsman  who  thinks 
his  pretence  at  decoration  beautiful,  and  the 
public  is  but  repeating  the  lesson  it  has 
learnt  from  him  when  it  clamours  for  its  'two- 
pence coloured.'  He,  or  the  man  who  sells 
his  goods,  has  invented  a  word  to  describe 
the  last  touch  which  invariably  spoils  even 
the  nearest  approach  to  good  design  :  it  is  a 
'finish.'  'This  gives  it  a  finish,  sir,'  says 
the  shopman,  as  he  proudly  points  out  to 
you  exactly  how  the  thing  is  spoilt. 

I  suppose  that  the  craftsmen  who  design 


THE  DECAY  OF  CRAFTSMANSHIP    185 

our  lamp-posts,  our  fire-irons,  the  stripes  of 
our  pyjamas  and  the  shape  of  our  pianos,  are 
humble  persons  not  in  a  '  higher  way  of  busi- 
ness '  than  the  craftsmen  who  made  those 
'  vase-shaped  dishes '  I  was  speaking  of,  or  the 
engraved  weights  with  which  the  butchers 
weighed  their  meat  in  ancient  Kome  or 
Greece.  But  the  latest  artist  in  iron-work 
to  the  County  Council  does  not  exhibit  at 
the  Arts  and  Crafts.  A  craftsman  must  be 
fairly  in  earnest  to  send  his  goods  to  be 
judged  by  a  committee  seated  at  the  New 
Gallery.  All  these  trivial  and  fantastical 
things  are  made  merely  to  sell;  they  are 
made  with  the  best  intentions ;  only  the 
artist  has  put  the  '  finish '  all  over  them  ;  it 
is  not  only  the  last  touch  that  sends  them 
wrong. 

And  in  how  many  cases  is  not  the  very 
form  itself  founded  on  a  misconception ! 
Take,  for  instance,  the  wall-papers,  and  put 
aside  the  question  of  their  merit  as  designs. 
May  it  not  be  reasonably  contended  that 
any  design  whatever  on  a  wall-paper  is 
decoratively  wrong  ?  In  the  modern  house 
a  wall-paper  is  a  background,  on  which 
pictures  and  other  objects  are  to  be  set.     It 


186       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

is  made,  however,  as  if  it  were  a  thing  in 
itself,  a  tapestry,  which  is  itself  to  form  the 
decoration  of  the  room.  What  harmony 
can  there  possibly  be  between  the  crowded 
lines  and  colours  of  the  wall-paper  and  the 
various  pictures  which  are  to  be  hung  upon 
it?  A  carpet,  on  which  nothing  is  set 
which  can  be  considered  in  closer  relation  to 
it  than  that  of  the  most  general  colour- 
scheme,  need  not  be  plain,  though  one  may 
prefer  to  have  it  plain  ;  a  designed  wall- 
paper, unless  it  is  to  be  the  only  decoration 
of  the  walls,  is  itself  an  anomaly. 


Ill 

Has  the  Englishman  always  been  without 
taste  in  these  matters  of  household  and 
personal  decoration  ?  Are  we  wholly  de- 
ficient as  a  race  in  any  fine  sense  of  beauty 
outside  picture  frames  and  the  covers  of 
books  ?  By  no  means.  Take  the  George 
silver,  the  Jacobean  furniture,  the  best 
English  china.  Here  is  an  Elizabethan  ring, 
gold  and  enamel,  with  a  square-set  jacinth  : 
it  has  a  temperate  beauty  of  its  own,  which 


THE  DECAY  OF  CRAFTSMANSHIP    187 

can  be  compared  with  the  more  elaborate 
richness  of  the  Italians,  the  more  massive 
character  of  the  Germans,  the  daintier 
French  style.  Here  is  an  oak  chest,  which 
belonged  to  George  Mason  ;  it  was  made 
no  more  than  a  hundred  and  fifty  or  so 
years  ago ;  there  is  some  carving  on  it 
which  has  a  kind  of  village  simplicity,  and 
it  is  nicely  proportioned,  nicely  divided  into 
panels.  I  could  point  to  the  arm-chairs  and 
settles  in  which  you  may  still  rest  in  certain 
village  inns ;  and,  if  you  like,  you  may 
look  up  at  the  thick  black  beams  of  the 
ceiling. 

Modern  craftsmanship  is  the  craftsman- 
ship of  the  machine,  those  deadly  pistons 
and  hammers  have  got  into  our  very  brains, 
and  a  serious  artist,  who  gives  himself  the 
time  to  think  out  a  piece  of  work,  and  do  it 
with  his  own  hands,  can  no  longer  either 
think  or  do  anything  that  is  not  mechanical. 
We  pride  ourselves  on  being  a  business 
nation  :  look  at  one  part  of  the  result.  The 
Americans  pride  themselves  on  being  an 
even  more  businesslike  business  nation ;  and 
has  any  beautifully  made  thing  come  out  of 
America  since  we  colonised  it  ?    In  so  far  as  it 


188       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

has  tried  to  oppose  commercialism  the  Arts 
and  Crafts  Society  has  done  the  right  thing ; 
the  lamentable  part  of  it  is  that  it  tilts  with 
so  ineffectual  a  lance.  It  is  useless  to  show  us 
feeble  work  merely  because  it  is  hand-made. 
Virtue  never  was  its  own  reward  on  such 
dubious  conditions.  Baudelaire,  in  one  of 
his  priceless  moralisings,  pointed  out  that 
the  unconventional  artist  must  first  be  able 
to  outdo  the  Philistine  on  the  ground  of  the 
Philistine,  before  he  goes  on  to  triumph  on 
his  own.  Just  so  the  man  must  show  the 
machine  that  he  can  do  all  its  own  work 
better,  before  he  sets  out  to  do  what  the 
machine  cannot  do  at  all 

1903. 


BEETHOVEN 


BEETHOVEN 


The  foundation  of  Beethoven's  art  is,  as 
Wagner  pointed  out,  a  great  innocence.  It 
is  the  unconscious  innocence  of  the  child 
and  the  instructed  innocence  of  the  saint. 
Beethoven  is  the  most  childlike  of  musicians, 
and  of  all  artists  it  is  most  natural  to  the 
musician  to  be  childlike.  There  is,  in  every 
artist,  a  return  toward  childhood ;  he  must 
be  led  by  the  hand  through  the  streets  of 
the  world,  in  which  he  wanders  open-eyed 
and  with  heedless  feet.  Pious  hands  must 
rock  him  to  sleep,  comfort  his  tears,  and 
labour  with  him  in  his  playtime.  He  will 
speak  the  wisdom  of  the  child,  unconsciously, 
without  translating  it  into  the  formal 
language  of  experience. 

Beethoven's  naivete  can  be  distinguished 
at    every   moment    in   his   music ;    in    his 

191 


192       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

simplicities,  trivialities,  in  his  ready  accept- 
ance of  things  as  they  are,  and,  again,  in  his 
gravities  and  what  may  seem  like  over- 
emphasis. It  does  not  occur  to  him  that 
you  will  not  take  things  as  simply  as  he 
does.  His  music  is  '  nature,  heard  through 
a  temperament,'  and  he  hears  the  voices  of 
nature  with  almost  the  credulity  with 
which  he  hears  the  often  deceiving  voices 
of  men. 

Modern  musicians  are  on  their  guard, 
even  against  nature.  Wagner  is  never 
without  the  consciousness  of  so  many  things 
which  his  critical  intelligence  whispers  to 
him  that  he  must  refrain  from.  What 
modern  painter  was  it  who  said  that 
'  nature  put  him  out '  ?  Wagner  takes 
elaborate  precautions  against  being  put 
out  by  nature,  and,  after  that,  against 
allowing  any  one  to  suppose  that  nature  has 
put  him  out.  But  Beethoven  surrenders. 
It  is  unthinkable  to  him  that  a  sound  could 
deceive  him. 

It  is  usual  to  compare  Beethoven  with 
Shakespeare;  but  is  he,  in  any  sense,  a 
dramatist?  Is  he  not  rather,  if  we  are 
to    speak  in    terms    of   literature,   an  epic 


BEETHOVEN  193 

poet,  nearer  to  Homer  and  to  Milton  than 
to  Shakespeare  ?  When  Beethoven  becomes 
tremendous,  it  is  the  sublime,  not  in  action, 
but  in  being;  his  playfulness  is  a  nobler 
'  Comus,'  a  pastoral  more  deeply  related  to 
the  innocence  and  ecstasy  of  nature.  He 
has  the  heroic  note  of  Homer,  or  of  Milton's 
Satan,  or  of  Dante,  whom  in  some  ways 
he  most  resembles ;  but  I  distinguish  no 
Lear,  no  Hamlet,  no  Othello.  Nor  is  his 
comedy  Shakespearean,  a  playing  with  the 
pleasant  humour  of  life  on  its  surface ;  it  is 
the  gaiety  which  cries  in  the  bird,  rustles  in 
leaves,  shines  in  spray ;  it  is  a  voice  as 
immediate  as  sunlight.  Some  new  epithet 
must  be  invented  for  this  music  which 
narrates  nothing,  yet  is  epic ;  sings  no 
articulate  message,  yet  is  lyric ;  moves  to 
no  distinguishable  action,  yet  is  already 
awake  in  the  void  waters,  out  of  which  a 
world  is  to  awaken. 


II 

Music,  as  Schopenhauer  has  made  clear 
to  us,  is  not  a  representation  of  the  world, 
but  an  immediate  voice  of  the  world.     The 

N 


194       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

musician,  he  tells  us,  '  reveals  the  innermost 
essential  being  of  the  world,  and  expresses 
the  highest  wisdom  in  a  language  his  reason 
does  not  understand.'  'We  may  take  the 
perceptible  world,  or  nature,  and  music,  as 
two  different  expressions  of  the  same  thing.' 
'  Accordingly,  we  might  call  the  world  "  em- 
bodied music," '  music  differing  from  all 
other  arts  in  this,  '  that  it  is  not  an  image  of 
phenomena,'  but  represents  '  the  thing  itself 
which  lies  behind  all  appearances.'  In  the 
language  of  the  Schoolmen,  '  concepts  are 
universalia  post  rem,  actuality  universalia  in 
re,  whereas  music  gives  uriiversalia  ante  rem.' 
It  is  thus  that  the  musician  joins  hands 
with  the  child  and  the  saint,  if,  as  we  may 
believe,  the  child  still  remembers  some- 
thing of 

that  imperial  palace  whence  he  came, 

and  the  saint  lives  always  in  such  a  house 
not  made  with  hands.  The  musician, 
through  what  is  active  in  his  art,  creates 
over  again,  translates  for  us,  that  whole 
essential  part  of  things  which  is  ended 
when  we  speak,  and  deformed  when  we 
begin  labouring  to  make  it  visible  in  marble. 


BEETHOVEN  195 

or  on  canvas,  or  through  any  of  the  actual 
particles  of  the  earth.  All  Beethoven's 
waking  life  was  a  kind  of  somnambulism, 
more  literally  so  than  that  of  any  other  man 
of  genius ;  and  not  only  when  deafness 
dropped  a  soft  enveloping  veil  between  him 
and  discords.  '  Must  not  his  intercourse 
with  the  world,'  says  Wagner,  in  his  book 
on  Beethoven,  '  resemble  the  condition  of  one 
who,  awakening  from  deepest  sleep,  in  vain 
endeavours  to  recall  his  blissful  dream  ? ' 
To  Shakespeare,  to  Michelangelo,  who  are 
concerned  with  the  phenomena  of  the  world 
as  well  as  with  '  the  thing  itself  which  lies 
behind  all  appearances,'  something  is  gained, 
some  direct  aid  for  art,  by  a  continual 
awakening  out  of  that  trance  in  which  they 
speak  with  nature.  Beethoven  alone,  the 
musician,  gains  nothing :  he  is  concerned 
only  with  one  world,  the  inner  world ;  and 
it  is  well  for  him  if  he  never  awakens. 

Why  is  it  that  music  is  not  limited  in 
regard  to  length,  as  a  poem  is,  a  lyrical 
poem,  to  which  music  is  most  akin  ?  Is  it 
not  because  the  ecstasy  of  music  can  be 
maintained  indefinitely  and  at  its  highest 
pitch,  while  the  ecstasy  of  verse  is  shortened 


196       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

by  what  is  definite  in  words  ?  There  are 
poems  of  Swinburne  which  attempt  to  com- 
pete with  music  on  its  own  ground, 
'  Tristram  of  Lyonesse,'  for  example  ;  and 
they  tire  the  ear  which  the  music  of 
Wagner's  '  Tristan '  keeps  passionately  alert 
for  a  whole  evening.  This  is  because  we 
ask  of  words  some  more  definite  appeal  to 
the  mind  than  we  ask  of  music,  and  an 
unsubstantial  ecstasy  wearies  us  like  the 
hollow  voice  of  a  ghost,  which  we  doubt 
while  we  hear  it.  Music  comes  speaking 
the  highest  wisdom  in  a  language  which  our 
reason  does  not  understand ;  because  it  is 
older  and  deeper  and  closer  to  us  than  our 
reason.  Music  can  prolong,  reiterate,  and 
delicately  vary  the  ecstasy  itself:  and  its 
voice  is  all  the  while  speaking  to  us  out  of 
our  own  hearts.  To  listen  to  music  is  a  re- 
membrance, and  it  is  only  of  memory  that 
men  never  grow  weary. 

Music,  says  Wagner  profoundly,  'blots 
out  our  entire  civilisation  as  sunshine  does 
lamplight.'  It  is  the  only  art  which  renders 
us  completely  unconscious  of  everything  else 
but  the  ecstasy  at  the  root  of  life ;  it  is  the 
only  art  which  we  can  absorb  with  closed 


BEETHOVEN  197 

eyes,  like  an  articulate  perfume ;  it  is  the 
only  divine  drunkenness,  the  only  Dionysiac 
art.  Beethoven's  Tenth  Symphony  was  to 
have  been  a  direct  hymn  to  Dionysus.  '  In 
the  Adagio,'  he  noted  in  his  sketch-book, 
'  the  text  of  a  Greek  myth,  cantique  ecclesi- 
astique,  in  the  Allegro  feast  of  Bacchus.'  It 
was  to  do  what  Goethe  had  tried  to  do  in 
the  Second  Part  of  '  Faust '  :  reconcile  the 
Pagan  with  the  Christian  world.  But  it  was 
to  do  more  than  that,  and  would  it  not  have 
taken  us  deeper  even  than  the  Hymn  to  Joy 
of  the  Ninth  Symphony  :  to  that  immeasur- 
able depth  out  of  which  the  cry  of  suffering 
is  a  hymn  of  victory  ? 

Music,  then,  being  this  voice  of  things  in 
themselves,  and  the  only  magic  against  the 
present,  it  will  be  useless  to  search  into 
Beethoven's  life,  and  to  ask  of  his  music 
some  correspondence  between  its  colour 
and  humour  and  the  colour  and  humour  of 
events.  Let  us  take  an  instance.  In  the 
year  1802  Beethoven  wrote  that  tragic 
confession  known  as  the  Testament  of 
Heiligenstadt.  The  whole  agony  of  his 
deafness  has  come  upon  him.  *  I  must  live,' 
he  says,   '  like  an    exile.  .  .  .  Such  things 


198       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

brought  me  to  the  verge  of  desperation,  and 
well-nigh  caused  me  to  put  an  end  to  my 
life.  ...  I  joyfully  hasten  to  meet  death. 
If  he  comes  before  I  have  had  the  oppor- 
tunity of  developing  all  my  artistic  powers, 
then,  notwithstanding  my  cruel  fate,  he  will 
come  too  early  for  me,  and  I  should  wish  for 
him  at  a  more  distant  period ;  but  even 
then  I  shall  be  content,  for  his  advent  will 
release  me  from  a  state  of  endless  suffering.' 
And,  on  the  outside  of  the  sealed  packet, 
to  be  opened  only  at  his  death,  he  writes : 
'  Oh,  Providence,  vouchsafe  me  one  day  of 
pure  felicity ! '  Now  it  was  at  this  period 
that  Beethoven  wrote  the  Second  Symphony. 
I  turn  to  Berlioz's  analysis  of  it  in  his 
'Etude  critique  des  Symphonies  de  Beet- 
hoven,' and  I  read :  '  Le  scherzo  est  aussi 
franchement  gai  dans  sa  capricieuse  fantaisie, 
que  V andante  a  ete  completement  heureux  et 
calme ;  car  tout  est  riant  dans  cette  sym- 
phonie,  les  ^lans  guerriers  du  premier 
allegro  sont  eux-m^mes  tout  k  fait  exempts 
de  violence  ;  on  n'y  saurait  voir  que  I'ardeur 
juvenile  d'un  noble  coeur  dans  lequel  se  sont 
conservees  intactes  les  plus  belles  illusions 
de  la  vie.' 


BEETHOVEN  199 

'  Les  plus  belles  illusions  de  la  vie ! ' 
*  The  fond  hope  I  brought  with  me  here/ 
writes  Beethoven  at  Heiligenstadt,  'of  being 
to  a  certain  degree  cured,  now  utterly  for- 
sakes me.  As  the  autumn  leaves  fall  and 
wither,  so  are  my  hopes  blighted.' 

Twice  in  Beethoven's  life  there  is  an 
interruption  in  his  unceasing  labour  at  his 
work.  The  first  time  is  during  the  three 
years  from  1808  to  1811,  when  he  was  in 
love  with  Ther^se  Malfatti ;  the  second  time 
is  from  1815  to  1818,  after  his  brother's 
death.  During  these  two  periods  he  wrote 
little  of  importance ;  personal  emotion 
gripped  him,  and  he  could  not  loosen  the 
grasp.  During  all  the  rest  of  his  agitated 
and  tormented  life,  nothing,  neither  the 
constant  series  of  passionate  and  brief  loves, 
nor  constant  bodily  sickness,  trouble  about 
money,  trouble  about  friends,  relations,  and 
the  unspeakable  nephew,  meant  anything 
vital  to  his  deeper  self  The  nephew  helped 
to  kill  him,  but  could  not  colour  a  note  of 
his  music.  Not  '  his  view  of  the  world,'  but 
the  world  itself  spoke  through  those  sounds 
which  could  never  shrink  to  the  point  at 
which  these  earthly  discords  were  audible. 


200       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

Music  is  a  refuge,  and  can  speak  with  the 
same  voice  to  the  man  who  is  suffering  as  to 
the  man  who  is  happy,  and  through  him, 
with  the  same  voice,  when  he  is  suffering  or 
when  he  is  happy.  It  is  here  that  music  is 
so  different  from  Hterature,  for  instance, 
where  the  words  mean  things,  and  bring 
back  emotions  too  clearly  and  in  too 
personal  a  way.  The  musician  is,  after  all, 
the  one  impersonal  artist,  who,  having  lived 
through  joy  and  sorrow,  has  both  in  his 
hands  ;  can  use  them  like  the  right  hand  and 
the  left. 

And  just  as  the  musician  can  do  without 
life,  can  be  uncontaminated  by  life,  so,  in 
his  relations  with  other  arts,  with  the 
mechanism  of  words  and  the  conditions  of 
writing  for  the  stage  and  such  like,  he  will 
have  his  own  touchstone,  his  own  standard 
of  values.  During  a  great  part  of  his  life 
Beethoven  was  looking  out  for  a  libretto  on 
which  he  could  write  an  opera.  His  one 
opera,  '  Fidelio,'  is  written  on  a  miserable 
libretto  ;  but  the  subject,  with  its  heroisms, 
was  what  he  wanted,  and  he  was  probably 
little  conscious  of  the  form  in  which  it  was 
expressed  ;  for  with  him  the  words  meant 


BEETHOVEN  201 

nothing,  but  the  nature  of  the  emotion 
which  these  words  expressed  was  everything. 
When  he  said,  speaking  as  some  have  thought 
shghtingly  of  Mozart,  that  he  would  never 
have  written  a  *  Don  Giovanni '  or  a  '  Figaro,' 
he  merely  meant  that  the  very  nature  of 
such  subjects  was  antipathetic  to  him,  and 
that  he  could  never  have  induced  himself  to 
take  them  seriously.  Mozart,  with  his 
divine  nonchalance,  snatched  at  any  earthly 
happiness,  any  gaiety  of  the  flesh  or  spirit, 
and  changed  it  instantly  into  the  immortal 
substance  of  his  music.  But  Beethoven, 
with  his  peasant's  seriousness,  could  not  jest 
with  virtue  or  the  rhythmical  order  of  the 
world.  His  art  was  his  religion,  and  must 
be  served  with  a  devotion  in  which  there  was 
none  of  the  easy  pleasantness  of  the  world. 

And  it  was  for  this  reason  that  he  could 
find  his  own  pasture  in  bad  poets,  hke  Klop- 
stock,  whom  he  carried  about  with  him  for 
years,  like  a  Bible.  Goethe,  he  admits  later, 
had  spoiled  Klopstock  for  him.  But  still 
Klopstock  was  always  '  maestoso,  D  flat 
major ' ;  he  '  exalted  the  mind.'  He  brooded 
over  Sturm's  devotional  work,  '  Considera- 
tions on   the  Works   of    God    in    Nature,' 


202       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

because  he  found  in  it  his  own  deep,  strenu- 
ously unlimited,  love  of  God.  It  was  the 
fundamental  idea  that  he  cared  for,  always ; 
and,  for  the  most  part,  this  drew  him  to  the 
greatest  writers  :  to  Homer  and  Shakespeare 
for  heroic  poetry,  to  Plutarch  for  the  lives 
of  heroes.  And  he  was  incapable  of  unbend- 
ing, of  finding  pleasure  in  work  which  seemed 
to  come  from  a  less  noble  impulse.  During 
his  last  illness  one  of  Scott's  novels  was 
brought  to  him,  that  he  might  read  some- 
thing which  would  not  fatigue  him  too 
much.  But  after  a  few  pages  he  tossed  the 
book  aside  :  '  The  man  seems  to  be  writing 
for  money,'  he  said. 

There  stood  on  Beethoven's  writing-table, 
during  most  of  his  life,  a  sheet  of  paper, 
framed  and  under  glass,  on  which  he  had 
written  carefully  three  maxims,  found  by 
Champollion-Figeac  among  the  inscriptions 
of  an  Egyptian  temple  :  '  Je  suis  ce  qui  est. — 
Je  suis  tout  ce  qui  est,  ce  qui  a  ete,  ce  qui 
sera;  nulle  main  mortelle  n'a  soulev^  mon 
voile. — II  est  par  lui-meme  et  c'est  k  lui  que 
tout  doit  son  existence.' 

When  I  said  that  Beethoven  had  the 
innocence  of  the  saint  as  well  as  that  of  the 


BEETHOVEN  203 

child,  I  was  thinking  partly  of  that  passion- 
ate love  of  nature  which,  in  him,  was  like  an 
instinct  which  becomes  a  religion.  He 
wrote  to  Ther^se :  '  No  man  on  earth  can 
love  the  country  as  I  do.  It  is  trees,  woods, 
and  rocks  that  return  to  us  the  echo  of  our 
thought.'  He  rushed  into  the  open  air,  as 
into  a  home,  out  of  one  miserable  lodging 
after  another,  in  which  the  roofs  and  walls 
seemed  to  hedge  him  round.  Klober  the 
painter  tells  us  how,  when  he  was  in  the 
country  he  '  would  stand  still,  as  if  listening, 
with  a  piece  of  music-paper  in  his  hand,  look 
up  and  down,  and  then  write  something.' 
He  liked  to  lie  on  his  back,  staring  into  the 
sky ;  in  the  fields  he  could  give  way  to  the 
intoxication  of  his  delight ;  there,  nothing 
came  between  him  and  the  sun ;  which,  said 
Turner,  is  God. 

The  animal  cry  of  desire  is  not  in  Beet- 
hoven's music.  Its  Bacchic  leapings,  when 
mirth  abandons  itself  to  the  last  ecstasy, 
have  in  them  a  sense  of  religious  abandon- 
ment which  belongs  wholly  to  the  Greeks, 
to  whom  this  abandonment  brought  no 
suggestion  of  sin.  With  Christianity,  the 
primitive  orgy,  the  unloosing  of  the  instincts, 


204       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

becomes  sinful ;  and  in  the  music  of  Wag- 
ner's Venusberg  we  hear  the  cry  of  nature 
turned  evil.  Pain,  division  of  soul,  reluc- 
tance, come  into  this  once  wholly  innocent 
delight  in  the  drunkenness  of  the  senses ; 
and  a  new  music,  all  lascivious  fever  and 
tormented  and  unwilling  joy,  arises  to  be  its 
voice.  But  to  Beethoven  nature  was  still 
healthy,  and  joy  had  not  begun  to  be  a 
subtle  form  of  pain.  His  joy  sometimes 
seems  to  us  to  lack  poignancy,  but  that  is 
because  the  gods,  for  him,  have  never  gone 
into  exile,  and  the  wine-god  is  not  '  a 
Bacchus  who  has  been  in  hell.'  Yet  there 
is  passion  in  his  music,  a  passion  so  pro- 
found that  it  becomes  universal.  He  loves 
love,  rather  than  any  of  the  images  of  love. 
He  loves  nature  with  the  same,  or  with  a 
more  constant,  passion.  He  loves  God, 
whom  he  cannot  name,  whom  he  worships  in 
no  church  built  with  hands,  with  an  equal 
rapture.  Virtue  appears  to  him  with  the 
same  loveliness  as  beauty.  And  out  of  all 
these  adorations  he  has  created  for  himself 
a  great  and  abiding  joy.  The  breadth  of 
the  rhythm  of  his  joy  extends  beyond  mortal 
joy   and  mortal  sorrow.      There  are  times 


BEETHOVEN  205 

when  he  despairs  for  himself,  never  for  the 
world.  Law,  order,  a  faultless  celestial 
music,  alone  existed  for  him ;  and  these  he 
believed  to  have  been  settled,  before  time 
was,  in  the  heavens.  Thus  his  music  was 
neither  revolt  nor  melancholy,  each  an 
atheism ;  the  one  being  an  arraignment  of 
God  and  the  other  a  dcDial  of  God. 


Ill 

Beethoven  invented  no  new  form ;  he 
expanded  form  to  the  measure  of  his  inten- 
tions, making  it  contain  what  he  wanted. 
Sometimes  it  broke  in  the  expansion,  yet 
without  setting  him  on  the  search  for  some 
new  form  which  would  be  indefinitely  elastic. 
The  *  Missa  Solennis,'  for  instance,  grew 
beyond  the  proportions  of  a  mass,  and  was 
finished  with  no  thought  of  a  service  of  the 
church ;  the  music  went  its  own  way,  and 
turned  into  a  vast  shapeless  oratorio,  an 
anomaly  of  the  concert-room.  '  Fidelio '  is 
an  opera  which  has  not  even  the  formal 
merits  of  the  best  operas  produced  on  the 
Italian  method ;  it  hves  a  separate  life  in 
divine  fragments,  and  is  wholly  expressive 


206       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

only  in  the  two  great  overtures,  of  which 
only  the  second  is  properly  speaking  dra- 
matic, while  the  third  transcends  and  escapes 
drama.  In  the  second  overture,  music 
speaks,  in  these  profound  and  sombre  voices, 
as  in  a  drama  in  which  powers  and  destinies 
contend  in  the  air.  The  trumpet-call  behind 
the  scenes  attaches  it,  by  a  deliberate  ex- 
ternality, to  the  stage.  But  in  the  third 
overture,  where  music  surges  up  out  of  some 
hell  which  is  heaven,  that  it  may  make 
a  new  earth,  there  is  hardly  anything  that 
we  can  limit  or  identify  as  drama;  not  even 
the  trumpet-call  behind  the  scenes,  which 
has  become  wholly  a  part  of  the  musical 
texture,  and  no  longer  calls  off  the  mind 
from  that  deeper  sense  of  things. 

Yet,  if  we  follow  Beethoven  through  any 
series  of  his  works,  through  the  sonatas,  for 
instance,  or  the  symphonies,  we  shall  see  a 
steady  development,  almost  wholly  unexperi- 
mental,  and  for  that  all  the  more  significant. 
Each  of  the  symphonies  develops  out  of  the 
last,  each  is  a  step  forward ;  not  that  each 
is  literally  greater  than  the  last,  but  has 
something  new  in  it,  an  acquirement  in  art, 
or    a    growth    in   personality.       That   this 


BEETHOVEN  207 

should  be  so  is  the  only  excuse  for  an  artist's 
production ;  only  secondary  men  repeat 
themselves ;  the  great  artist  is  incapable  of 
turning  back.  As  he  goes  forward,  the 
public,  naturally,  which  has  come  to  accept 
him  at  a  given  moment  of  his  progress, 
remains  stationary ;  and  when  the  public  is 
not  wholly  dominated  by  a  great  name,  so 
that  it  dares  not  rebel  enough  to  choose 
after  its  own  liking,  there  comes  a  time 
when  the  public  ceases  to  comprehend,  and 
begins  to  prefer,  that  is  to  condemn. 

The  public  of  Beethoven's  day,  like  the 
public  for  which  and  against  which  every 
great  artist  has  worked,  forgot  that  its  only 
duty  is  to  receive  blindly  whatever  a  great 
artist,  once  recognised  as  such,  has  to  give 
it ;  that  its  one  virtue  is  gratitude,  and  its 
cardinal  sin,  an  attempt  at  discrimination. 
Beethoven  had  not  to  wait  for  fame ;  his 
earliest  compositions  were  admired,  his  first 
publication  was  well  paid.  '  Publishers  dis- 
pute one  with  another,'  he  wrote  early  in 
life :  '  I  fix  my  own  price.'  Yet,  at  the 
same  time,  he  was  never,  up  to  the  very  end 
of  his  career,  taken  entirely  at  his  own 
valuation,  and  allowed  to  do  what  he  liked 


208       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

in  whatever  way  he  liked.  In  1816  the 
Philharmonic  Society  sent  one  of  its  members 
to  ask  for  a  new  symphony,  and  to  offer 
£100  for  it.  Beethoven,  who  had  already 
written  his  Eighth  Symphony,  was  about  to 
accept  the  offer,  when  it  was  intimated  to 
him  that  the  new  work  must  be  in  the  style 
of  his  earlier  symphonies.  He  refused  with 
indignation,  and  London  lost  the  honour  of 
having  'ordered'  the  Ninth  Symphony. 
Ten  years  earlier  he  had  begged  for  the 
post  of  composer  to  the  Vienna  opera, 
engaging  to  compose  an  opera  and  an  opera- 
comique  or  ballet  every  year,  in  return  for 
a  very  moderate  salary.  The  letter  of 
request  was  not  even  answered.  Before 
that,  '  Fidelio '  had  failed,  and  the  critics 
had  assured  one  another  that  'the  music 
was  greatly  inferior  to  the  expectations  of 
amateurs  and  connoisseurs.'  In  other  words, 
Beethoven,  recognised  from  the  first  as  a 
great  artist,  was  never  accepted  in  the  only 
way  in  which  public  appreciation  can  be 
other  than  an  insult :  he  was  never  wholly 
'  hors  concours.'  Just  before  his  death,  one 
of  his  intimate  friends  took  it  upon  him  to 
say  that  he  preferred  a  certain  one  of  the 


BEETHOVEN  209 

last  quartets  to  the  others.  *  Each,'  said 
Beethoven,  once  and  for  all,  *  has  its  merit 
in  its  own  way.' 


IV 

Wagner  has  pointed  out  that  it  was 
bodily  motion  which  first  gave  its  beat  to 
music  ;  that  is  to  say,  that  the  articulate 
life  of  music  comes  from  what  is  most 
instinctive  in  life  itself.  All  instrumental 
music  has  its  origin  in  the  dance,  and  in  the 
symphonies  of  Haydn  we  have  little  more 
than  a  succession  of  dances  with  variations. 
And  Beethoven,  in  one  movement,  the 
Minuet  or  Scherzo,  gives  us,  as  Wagner 
says,  '  a  piece  of  real  dance-music,  which 
could  very  well  be  danced  to.  An  instinctive 
need  seems  to  have  led  the  composer  into 
quite  immediate  contact  with  the  material 
basis  of  his  work  for  once  in  its  course,  as 
though  his  foot  were  feeling  for  the  ground 
that  was  to  carry  him.' 

Is  it  not  here,  in  this  solid  and  unshakable 
acceptance  of  what  is  simplest,  most  funda- 
mental, in  life  itself  and  in  the  life  of  music, 
that  Beethoven  comes  into  deepest  contact 

o 


210       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

with  humanity,  and  lays  his  musical  founda- 
tions for  eternity  1  And  he  is  himself,  first 
of  all,  and  before  he  begins  to  write  music, 
a  part  of  nature,  instinctive.  In  Beethoven 
the  peasant  and  the  man  of  genius  are  in 
continual,  fruitful  conflict.  A  bodily  vigour, 
as  if  rooted  in  the  earth,  is  hourly  shattered 
and  built  up  again  by  the  nerves  in  action 
and  recoil.  And,  in  the  music  itself,  quite 
literally,  and  almost  at  its  greatest,  one 
hears  this  elemental  peasant ;  as  in  the 
AUegt^o  con  brio  of  the  Seventh  Symphony, 
with  its  shattering  humour.  It  is  a  big, 
frank,  gross,  great  thing,  wallowing  in  its 
mirth  like  a  young  Hercules.  Often,  as  in 
the  last  movement  of  the  Trio  (Op.  97),  he 
disconcerts  you  by  his  simplicity,  his  buoyant 
and  almost  empty  gaiety.  It  is  difficult  to 
realise  that  a  great  man  can  be  so  homely 
and  such  a  child.  No  one  else  accepts  nature 
any  longer  on  such  confiding  terms.  And 
he  has  but  just  awakened  out  oi'  sm  Andante 
in  which  music  has  been  honey  to  the  tongue 
and  an  ecstatic  peace  to  the  soul. 

This  simplicity,  this  naive  return  to 
origins,  to  the  dance-tune,  to  a  rhythm  which 
can   swing    from   the   village   band   in   the 


BEETHOVEN  211 

Scherzo  of  the  Pastoral  Symphony  to  the 
vast  elemental  surge  of  the  Allegro  of  the 
Choral  Symphony  (as  of  the  morning  stars 
singing  together)  leads,  now  and  then,  to 
what  has  been  taken  for  something  quite 
dijfferent  from  what  it  is  :  an  apparent  aim 
at  realism,  which  is  no  more  than  apparent. 
In  the  whole  of  the  Pastoral  Symphony  one 
certainly  gets  an  atmosphere  which  is  the 
musical  equivalent  of  skies  and  air  and 
country  idleness  and  the  delight  of  sunlight, 
not  because  a  bird  cries  here  and  there,  and 
a  storm  mutters  obviously  among  the  double 
basses,  but  because  a  feeling,  constantly  at 
the  roots  of  his  being,  and  present  in  some 
form  in  almost  all  his  music,  came  for  once 
to  be  concentrated  a  little  deliberately,  as  if 
in  a  dedication,  by  way  of  gratitude.  All 
through  there  is  humour,  and  the  realism  is 
a  form  of  it,  the  bird's  notes  on  the  instru- 
ments, the  thunder  and  wind  and  the  flow- 
ing of  water,  as  certainly  as  the  village 
band.  Here,  as  everywhere,  it  was,  as  he 
said,  '  expression  of  feeling  rather  than 
painting '  that  he  aimed  at ;  and  it  would 
be  curious  if  these  humorous  asides,  done 
with    childish    good-humour,    should    have 


212       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

helped  to  lead  the  way  to  much  serious 
modern  music,  in  which  natural  sounds,  and 
all  the  accidents  of  actual  noise,  have  been 
solemnly  and  conscientiously  imitated  for 
their  own  sakes. 

Is  Beethoven's  act  in  calling  in  the  help 
of  words  and  voices  at  the  end  of  the  Ninth 
Symphony  necessarily  to  be  taken  as  leading 
the  way  to  Wagner,  as  Wagner  held,  and  as 
at  first  sight  seems  unquestionable  ?  Is  it 
Beethoven's  confession  that  there  comes  a 
moment  when  music  can  say  no  more,  and 
words  must  step  in  to  carry  on  the  meaning 
of  the  sounds  ?  If  so,  does  not  the  whole 
theory  of  music  being  the  voice  of  nature 
itself,  an  art  which  has  arisen  '  from  the 
immediate  consciousness  of  the  identity  of 
our  inner  being  with  that  of  the  outer  world,' 
as  Wagner  calls  it,  fall  to  the  ground  ?  It 
seems  to  me  that  in  adding  voices  to  the 
instruments,  Beethoven  did  no  more  than 
add  another  exquisitely  expressive  instru- 
ment to  the  orchestra ;  in  adding  that 
instrument  he  added  words  also,  because 
words  support  the  voice,  as  the  shoulder 
supports  the  violin.  But  I  contend  that 
the  words  of  Schiller's  '  Hymn  to  Joy '  might 


BEETHOVEN  213 

be  replaced  by  meaningless  vowels  and  con- 
sonants, and  that  the  effect  of  the  Choral 
Symphony  would  be  identically  the  same. 
Beethoven's  inspiration  consisted  in  seeing 
that  the  effect  of  exultation  at  which  he  was 
aiming  could  best  be  rendered  by  a  chorus 
of  voices,  voices  considered  as  instruments ; 
he  was  increasing  his  orchestra,  that  was 
all. 

Wagner,  it  is  true,  realised  this ;  but, 
having  realised  it,  he  goes  on  to  conceive  of 
a  Shakespeare  entering  the  world  of  light 
simultaneously  with  a  Beethoven  entering 
the  world  of  sound,  and  a  new,  finer  art 
arising  out  of  that  mingling.  Here,  of 
course,  he  becomes  the  apologist  of  his  own 
music-drama ;  and  it  is  in  its  claim  to  have 
done  just  this  that  it  demands  considera- 
tion. Has  Wagner,  in  subordinating  his 
music,  if  not  to  the  words,  at  all  events  to 
the  action,  expressed  partly  by  the  words, 
really  carried  music  further,  or  has  he  added 
another  firmer  link  to  the  chain  which  holds 
music  to  the  earth  ?  Music-drama,  since 
Wagner  has  existed,  there  will  always  be; 
but  may  there  not  be  also  a  music  more  and 
more  '  absolute,'  of  which  voices  may  indeed 


214       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

form  part,  but  voices  without  words,  adding 
an  incomparable  instrument  to  the  orchestra  ? 
Why  need  music,  if  it  is  the  voice  of  some- 
thing deeper  than  action,  care  to  concern 
itself  with  drama,  which  is  the  ripple  on  the 
surface  of  a  great  depth  ?  As  it  dispenses 
with  the  stage,  or  the  conscious  exercise  of 
the  eyes,  so  it  will  dispense  with  words,  or 
the  conscious  exercise  of  the  mind  through 
the  hearing,  and,  in  an  equal  degree,  with 
the  intrusive  reasonings  of  a  programme,  at 
the  best  but  misleading  footnotes  to  a  mis- 
interpreted text. 


In  the  later  works  of  Beethoven  we  see  his 
attempt  to  express  himself  within  a  fixed 
form,  and  yet  without  losing  anything  of 
what  he  wanted  to  say,  through  the  pressure 
of  those  limits.  '  From  the  time,'  says 
Wagner,  '  when,  in  accord  with  the  moving 
sorrows  of  his  life,  there  awoke  in  the  artist 
a  longing  for  distinct  expression  of  specific, 
characteristically  individual  emotions  —  as 
though  to  unbosom  himself  to  the  intelligent 
sympathy  of  fellow-men — and  this  longing 


BEETHOVEN  215 

grew  into  an  ever  more  compulsive  force ; 
from  that  time  when  he  began  to  care  less 
and  less  about  merely  making  music,  about 
expressing  himself  agreeably,  enthrallingly 
or  inspiritingly  in  general,  within  that 
music ;  and,  instead  thereof,  was  driven  by 
the  general  necessity  of  his  inner  being  to 
employ  his  art  in  bringing  to  sure  and 
seizable  expression  a  definite  content  that 
absorbed  his  thoughts  and  feelings,'  then, 
says  Wagner,  begins  his  agony. 

And  this  agony  is  the  effort,  not  so  much 
to  say  in  music  things  really  or  merely 
individual,  but  to  force  music  to  tell  some 
of  its  own  secrets,  still  secrets  to  Beethoven. 
The  deepest  poetry  and  the  deepest  philo- 
sophy in  words  have  been  for  the  most  part 
questions  to  which  no  answer  has  been 
offered ;  hke  the  soliloquies  of  Hamlet  and 
the  thirty- eighth  chapter  of  Job.  When 
Beethoven  is  greatest  his  music  speaks  in  a 
voice  which  suggests  no  words,  and  is  the 
outpouring  of  a  heart  or  soul  too  full  for 
speech,  and  says  speechless  things.  And 
at  last  Beethoven  cares  only  for  the  saying 
of  these  speechless  things,  and  because  he 
cares  supremely  for  this  he  refines  his  form, 


216       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

through  which  alone  they  can  be  spoken, 
with  a  more  and  more  jealous  care,  fastening 
upon  the  roots  of  sound. 

In  Beethoven's  later  work,  and  especially 
in  the  last  quartets,  he  seems  actually  to 
rarefy  sound  itself.  What  is  this  new 
subtlety  and  poignancy  which  comes  into 
the  notes  themselves,  as  they  obey  a  master 
who  has  proceeded  by  one  exclusion  after 
another,  until  he  has  refined  sound  to  its 
last  shade,  or  sharpened  it  to  its  ultimate 
point  1  Already,  in  the  Quartet  in  C  major 
(Op.  59),  in  which  a  form  is  filled  without 
excess  and  without  default,  a  new  colour 
comes  into  the  harmonies,  as  they  reach 
after  an  unlimited  strength,  seeking  to  avoid 
all  merely  formal  or  limiting  sweetness. 
They  have  passed  through  fire,  and  come  out 
changed,  a  new  body  which  has  found  a  new 
soul.  Here  there  is  drama,  an  ominous  and 
mysterious  drama,  in  which  the  instruments 
are  the  persons :  tragic  cries  surge  up  and 
are  quieted ;  one  hears  the  deathdrum  beat- 
ing, perhaps  only  in  their  veins.  The 
discord  has  found  its  place,  liberating 
harmony,  and,  in  the  final  fugue,  one  sees 
the    strictest    of    forms   set    dancing    and 


BEETHOVEN  217 

hurrying,  with  a  meaning  not  only  in  the 
notes,  but  in  some  not  easily  followed  pro- 
cess of  thinking  in  music,  with  an  actual 
intellectual  ecstasy. 

In  the  last  quartets  form  is  so  completely 
mastered  that  form,  as  limit,  disappears,  and 
something  new,  strange,  incalculable,  arises 
and  exists.  The  purity  of  its  harmony  is  so 
acute  that  it  is  at  once  joy  and  pain, 
harmony  and  discord.  Beauty,  brought  to 
this  intensity,  at  moments  goes  mad  with 
delight.  There  is  a  gay,  mysterious,  en- 
tangling gravity,  a  kind  of  crabbed  sweet- 
ness, in  which  sweetness  becomes  savour. 
At  times,  as  in  the  Allegro  of  the  Quartet 
in  B  flat  major  (Op.  130),  sound  passes  into 
a  fluttering  of  wings,  as  Psyche,  the  butter- 
fly, soars  at  last  into  sunlight.  The  music 
began  with  elfin  laughter,  turned  serious, 
and  meditated  with  fine  subtlety,  and  then, 
in  the  frank  and  childish  return  '  alia  danza 
tedesca,'  seemed  to  go  back  to  the  first 
things  of  the  earth,  as  to  one's  roots  for  new 
fiap.  And  then,  in  that  Cavatina  which 
Beethoven  wrote  weeping,  one  overhears  a 
noble  and  not  despairing  sorrow,  which  can 
weep  but  not  whimper ;  an  imploring,  sadly 


218       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

questioning,  unresentful  lament ;  the  most 
reticent  sorrow  ever  rendered  in  music.  To 
have  written  this  movement  is  as  great  a 
thing  as  to  have  built  a  cathedral,  in  which, 
not  more  truly,  the  soul  shelters  from  its 
grief. 

When  I  hear  the  Quartet  in  F  major 
(Op.  135),  it  seems  to  me  that  music  has 
done  nothing  since,  that  it  contains  the 
germ,  and  more  than  the  germ,  of  all  modern 
music.  It  was  such  things,  no  doubt,  as 
the  Walkyries'  Ride  of  the  second  move- 
ment, the  Vivace,  which  seemed  unin- 
telligible, insane,  to  the  people  who  first 
heard  them,  even  after  hearing  all  the 
symphonies.  With  the  first  notes  of  the 
first  movement  we  are  in  the  heart  of 
music,  as  if  one  awoke  on  board  a  ship,  and 
was  on  the  open  sea,  beyond  sight  of  land. 
Here,  and  to  the  end,  every  note  has  its 
separate  meaning,  its  individual  life,  and  is 
more  than  the  mere  part  of  a  whole.  There 
is  so  much  music  which,  because  it  is  lead- 
ing to  something,  does  not  stay  by  the  way, 
conscious  of  itself,  perfect  as  an  end,  though 
it  is  also  perfect  as  the  means  to  an  end. 
In  the  Lento  Beethoven  prays ;  there  is  in 


BEETHOVEN  219 

it  a  peace  so  profound  and  yet  acute  that  it 
is  almost  sad ;  yet  it  is  neither  joy  nor 
sorrow,  but  a  hymn  to  God  out  of  sorrow, 
itself  faith,  resignation,  and  a  sure  and  cer- 
tain hope  of  the  '  rest  that  remaineth.' 
Even  Beethoven  never  made  a  more  beauti- 
ful melody,  nor  was  there  ever  in  music  a 
landscape  of  the  soul  so  illuminated  with  all 
the  soft  splendour  of  sunlight.  The  Grave 
leading  to  the  Allegro,  with  the  words, 
'  Muss  es  sein  ?  Es  muss  sein '  (the  *  pain- 
fully made  resolve ')  seems  willing,  for  once, 
in  a  kind  of  despair  or  distrust  even  of 
music,  to  fix  a  more  precise  meaning  upon 
sounds.  It  is  no  more,  really,  than  the 
irrelevant,  touching,  unneeded  outcry  of  the 
artist,  afraid  that  you  may  be  overlooking 
something  which  he  sees  or  hears,  no  doubt, 
so  much  more  clearly  than  you,  and  which 
he  cannot  bear  to  think  that  you  may  be 
overlooking. 


In  spite  of  Holbein,  Durer,  and  Cranach, 
in  spite  of  the  builders  in  stone  and  the 
workers  in   iron,    the    German  genius  has 


220       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

never  found  its  complete  expression  in  any 
of  the  plastic  arts.  Germany  has  had  both 
poets  and  philosophers,  who  have  done  great 
things ;  but  it  has  done  nothing  supreme 
except  in  music,  and  in  music  nothing 
supreme  has  been  done  outside  Germany 
since  the  music  of  Purcell  in  England. 

Diirer   created  a   very   German   kind    of 
beauty  ;  philosophers,  from  Kant  to  Nietz- 
sche,  have  created  system  after  system  of 
philosophy,  each  building  on  a   foundation 
made  out  of  the  ruins  of  the  last.     Goethe 
gave    wisdom    to    the    world    by    way    of 
Germany.       But   Goethe,    excellent    in    all 
things,  was  supreme  in  none ;  and  German 
beauty  is  not  universal  beauty.     In  Beet- 
hoven music  becomes  a  universal  language, 
and  it  does  so   without   ceasing   to   speak 
German.     Beethoven's  music  is  national,  as 
Dante's  or  Shakespeare's  poetry  is  national ; 
and  it  is  only  since  Beethoven  appeared  in 
Germany  that   Germany  can  be   compared 
with  the  Italy  which  produced  Dante  and 
the  England  which  produced    Shakespeare. 
On   the    whole,    Germans    have    not    been 
ungrateful.     But  they  have  had  their  own 
ways  of  expressing  gratitude. 


BEETHOVEN  221 

A  German  sculptor  has  represented  Beet- 
hoven as  a  large,  naked  gentleman,  sitting 
in  an  emblematical  arm-chair  with  a  shawl 
decently  thrown  across  his  knees.  In  this 
admired  production  all  the  evil  tendencies, 
gross  ambitions,  and  ineffectual  energies  of 
modern  German  art  seem  to  have  concen- 
trated themselves.  It  is  to  be  regretted 
that  Beethoven,  rather  than  any  more  showy 
person,  Goethe,  for  instance,  with  his 
'  Olympian '  air,  or  Schiller,  with  his  con- 
sumptive romanticism,  should  have  been 
made  the  conspicuous  victim  of  this  worst 
form  of  the  impotence  of  the  moment. 
There  is  a  sentence  spoken  by  Emilia  in  that 
novel  of  George  Meredith  which  no  longer 
bears  her  more  attractive  name,  through 
which  we  may  see  Beethoven  as  he  was  : 
'  I  have  seen  his  picture  in  shop-windows : 
the  wind  seemed  in  his  hair,  and  he  seemed 
to  hear  with  his  eyes  :  his  forehead  frowning 
so.'  To  look  from  this  visible  image  in 
words  to  the  construction  in  stone  of  Max 
Klinger  is  to  blot  out  vision  with  the  dust 
of  the  quarry.  During  his  lifetime  Beet- 
hoven suffered  many  things  from  his 
countrymen,  and  now  that  he  is  dead  they 


222       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

cannot  let  him  alone  in  the  grave  ;  but  must 
first  come  fumbling  with  heavy  fingers 
at  his  skull  (we  are  told  its  weight),  and 
then  setting  up  these  dishonouring  monu- 
ments in  his  honour. 

1904. 


THE  IDEAS  OF  RICHARD  WAGNER 


THE  IDEAS  OF  EICHARD  WAGNEfl 


One  of  the  good  actions  of  Baudelaire,  whose 
equity  of  conscience  in  matters  of  art  was 
flawless,  may  be  seen  in  a  pamphlet  pub- 
lished in  1861,  with  the  title  'Richard 
Wagner  et  Tannhauser  a  Paris.'  In  this 
pamphlet  Baudelaire  has  said  the  first  and 
the  last  word  on  many  of  the  problems  of 
Wagner's  work ;  and  perhaps  most  decisively 
on  that  problem  of  artist  and  critic  which 
has  so  often  disturbed  the  judgment  of 
reasoners  in  the  abstract.  Can  the  same 
man,  people  have  said,  of  Wagner  as  of 
others,  be  a  creator  and  also  a  thinker,  an 
instinctive  artist  and  a  maker  of  theories  ? 
This  is  Baudelaire's  answer,  and  it  is  suflB- 
cient :  '  It  would  be  a  wholly  new  event  in 
the  history  of  the  arts  if  a  critic  were  to 
turn  himself  into  a  poet,  a  reversal  of  every 

p  225 


226       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

pyschic  law,  a  nionstrosity ;  on  the  other 
hand,  all  great  poets  become  naturally,  in- 
evitably, critics.  I  pity  the  poets  who  are 
guided  solely  by  instinct ;  they  seem  to  me 
incomplete.  In  the  spiritual  life  of  the 
former  there  must  come  a  crisis  when  they 
would  think  out  their  art,  discover  the  ob- 
scure laws  in  consequence  of  which  they  have 
produced,  and  draw  from  this  study  a  series 
of  precepts  whose  divine  purpose  is  infal- 
libility in  poetic  production.  It  would  be  pro- 
digious for  a  critic  to  become  a  poet,  and  it  is 
impossible  for  a  poet  not  to  contain  a  critic' 
The  chief  distinction  and  main  value  of 
Wagner's  theoretical  writing  lies  in  this  fact, 
that  it  is  wholly  the  personal  expression  of 
an  artist  engaged  in  creative  work,  finding 
out  theories  by  the  way,  as  he  comes  upon 
obstacles  or  aids  in  the  nature  of  things. 
It  may  be  contended  that  only  this  kind  of 
criticism,  the  criticism  of  a  creative  artist, 
is  of  any  real  value ;  and  Wagner's  is  for 
the  most  part  more  than  criticism,  or  the 
judging  of  existent  work ;  it  is  a  building 
up  of  scaffolding  for  the  erection  of  work  to 
come.  In  '  A  Communication  to  my  Friends ' 
(1851),  which  is  an  autobiography  of  ideas, 


THE   IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        227 

he  has  taken  great  pains  to  trace  the  un- 
conscious, inevitable  evolution  of  his  work 
and  of  his  ideas.  He  not  only  tells  us,  he 
proves  to  us,  step  by  step,  that  none  of  his 
innovations  were  'prompted  by  reflection, 
but  solely  by  practical  experience,  and  the 
nature  of  his  artistic  aim.'  In  this  philoso- 
phical autobiography  we  see  the  growth  of 
a  great  artist,  more  clearly  perhaps  than  we 
see  it  in  any  similar  document ;  certainly  in 
more  precise  detail.  Wagner's  progress  as  an 
artist  was  vital,  for  it  was  the  progress  of  life. 
He  looked  upon  genius  as  an  immense  re- 
ceptivity, a  receptivity  so  immense  that  it 
filled  and  overflowed  the  being,  thus  forcing 
upon  it  the  need  to  create.  And  he  dis- 
tinguished between  the  two  kinds  of  artist, 
feminine  and  masculine ;  the  feminine  who 
absorbs  only  art,  and  the  masculine  who 
absorbs  life  itself,  and  from  life  derives  the 
new  material  which  he  will  turn  into  a  new 
and  living  art.  He  shows  us,  in  his  own 
work,  the  gradual  way  in  which  imitation 
passed  into  production,  the  unconscious 
moulding  of  the  stufl"  of  his  art  from  within, 
as  one  need  after  another  arose  ;  the  way  in 
which  every  innovation  in  form  came  from 


228       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

a  single  cause  :  the  necessity  '  to  convey  to 
others  as  vividly  and  intelligibly  as  possible 
what  his  own  mind's  eye  had  seen.'  He 
learns  sometimes  from  a  failure,  his  failure 
to  achieve  a  plan  wrongly  attempted  ;  some- 
times from  a  disappointment,  the  disappoint- 
ment of  seeing  work  after  work  fail,  and  then 
that  more  hopeless  one  of  being  applauded 
for  something  other  than  he  wanted  to  do, 
with  'the  good-humoured  sympathy  shown 
to  a  lunatic  by  his  friends.'  Sometimes  it 
is  from  a  woman  he  learns,  from  an  artist- 
woman  like  Schroder-Devrient,  of  whom  he 
says  :  '  The  remotest  contact  with  this  ex- 
traordinary woman  electrified  me  ;  for  many 
a  long  year,  down  even  to  the  present  day, 
I  saw,  I  heard,  I  felt  her  near  me,  whenever 
the  impulse  to  artistic  production  seized  me.' 
He  learns  from  the  Kevolution  of  1848,  from 
the  whistles  of  the  Jockey  Club  at  the 
first  night  of  '  Tannhauser '  in  Paris,  from  a 
desperate  realisation  of  what  opera  is,  of 
what  the  theatre  is,  of  what  the  pubhc  is. 
Nothing  ever  happens  to  him  in  vain ; 
nothing  that  touches  him  goes  by  without 
his  seizing  it ;  he  seizes  nothing  from  which 
he  does  not  wring  out  its  secret,  its  secret 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        229 

for  him.  Thus  alike  his  work  and  all  his 
practical  energies  grow  out  of  the  very  soil 
and  substance  of  his  life ;  thus  they  are  vital, 
and  promise  continuance  of  vitality,  as  few 
other  works  and  deeds  of  art  in  our  time 
can  be  said  to  do. 

Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that  we  owe,  if 
not  the  whole,  at  all  events  the  main  part, 
of  Wagner's  theoretical  writing  to  the 
impossibility  of  putting  his  work  before 
the  public  under  the  conditions  which  he 
judged  indispensable  to  its  proper  realisa- 
tion. Writing  in  1857  on  Liszt's  Symphonic 
Poems,  he  declares  proudly,  '  I  will  hold  by 
my  experience  that  whoever  waits  for  recog- 
nition by  his  foes,  before  he  can  make  up 
his  mind  about  himself,  must  have  indeed 
his  share  of  patience,  but  little  ground  for 
self-reliance.'  And  in  the  admirable  'Com- 
munication to  my  Friends,'  he  tells  those 
friends  why  he  addresses  them  and  not  the 
general,  indifferent  public ;  and  why  '  my 
friends  must  see  the  whole  of  me  in  order 
to  decide  whether  they  can  be  wholly  my 
friends.'  He  confesses  how  'tragical'  it  is 
that,  under  modern  conditions,  the  artist 
must  address  himself  to  the  understanding 


230       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

rather  than  to  the  feeling;  and  this  alike 
in  his  work  and  in  his  attempt  to  explain 
that  work  to  the  world  which  refuses  to 
let  him  achieve  it.  So  early  as  1857  he 
decides,  solemnly,  publicly,  that  he  will 
write  no  more  theory ;  twenty-five  years 
before  the  time  he  announces  his  plans,  ab- 
solutely completed,  and  declares, '  Only  with 
my  work  shall  you  see  me  again  ! ' 

To  read  the  pages  which  come  after  (by 
far  the  larger  half  of  the  prose  works)  is  to 
follow  step  by  step  what  seems  a  life's 
tragedy ;  only  that  it  is  to  end,  one  knows, 
as  a  divine  comedy.  A  few  ideas,  a  few 
needs,  growing  more  and  more  precise,  ad- 
justed more  and  more  definitely  within  their 
own  limits,  we  find  repeated  and  reiterated, 
without  haste  and  without  rest,  through 
book,  article,  letter,  speech.  All  this 
gathered  energy  presses  forward  in  one 
direction,  and  from  all  points,  with  an  attack 
as  of  the  Japanese  on  Port  Arthur,  unweari- 
able,  self-forgetful,  scientific.  It  is  only  in 
the  last  few  years  of  his  life  that  we  get 
theory  for  theory's  sake,  in  by  no  means 
the  most  valuable  part  of  his  work  :  discus- 
sions of  religion  (partly  against  Nietzsche), 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        231 

of  civilisation  (partly  on  behalf  of  Gobineau), 
dreams  that  had  always  been  his,  prophesy- 
ings,  doctrine ;  a  kind  of  '  Latter-day  Pam- 
phlets/ or  that  dogma  into  which  the  last 
words  of  a  great  artist  so  often  harden. 


n 

Wagner's  fundamental  ideas,  with  the 
precise  and  detailed  statement  and  explana- 
tion of  his  conception  of  art,  and  of  that 
work  of  art  which  it  was  his  unceasing 
endeavour  to  create,  or  rather  to  organise, 
are  contained  in  two  of  the  earliest  of  his 
prose  writings,  '  The  Art- work  of  the  Future  ' 
(1849)  and  'Opera  and  Drama'  (1851). 
Everything  else  in  his  theoretical  writing  is 
a  confirmation,  or  a  correction,  or  (very 
rarely)  a  contradiction,  of  what  is  to  be 
found  in  these  two  books ;  and  their 
thorough  understanding  is  so  essential  to 
any  realisation  of  why  Wagner  did  what  he 
did,  that  I  shall  attempt  to  give  as  complete 
a  summary  as  possible  of  the  main  ideas  con- 
tained in  them,  as  much  as  possible  in  his 
own  words. 

Here   and   elsewhere   all   my   quotations 


232       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

will  be  taken  from  the  monumental  transla- 
tion of  Wagner's  prose  works  by  Mr.  William 
Ashton  Ellis,  a  heroic  undertaking,  achieved 
nobly.  The  translation  of  Wagner  (and 
especially  of  these  two  books)  is  a  task  of 
extraordinary  difficulty,  and  can  never  quite 
seem  to  have  been  wholly  concluded.  Wag- 
ner's prose,  his  earlier  prose  particularly,  is 
clouded  by  the  smoke  of  German  meta- 
physics and  contorted  by  the  ruthless  con- 
scientiousness of  the  German  temperament. 
He  will  leave  nothing  unsaid,  even  if  there 
is  no  possible  way  of  saying  clearly  what  he 
wants  to  say.  And  he  does  somehow  say 
thinofs  that  have  never  been  said  before,  or 
never  from  so  near  the  roots.  Often  he  says 
them  picturesquely,  always  truthfully,  ener- 
getically, and,  above  all,  logically ;  rarely 
with  much  ease  or  charm.  He  is  terribly  in 
earnest,  and  words  are  things  to  be  used  for 
their  precise  and  honest  uses.  He  takes 
them  captive,  thrusts  them  together  from 
the  ends  of  the  earth,  and  lets  the  chains 
clank  between  them.  It  is  therefore  not  to 
be  expected  that  even  Mr.  Ellis,  with  his 
knowledge,  skill,  and  patience,  should  have 
been  able  to  make  Wagner  always  what  is 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        233 

called  readable  :  and  in  his  admirable  fidelity 
to  the  sense  and  words  of  the  original,  there 
are  times  (especially  in  those  difficult  early 
volumes)  when  what  we  read  may  indeed  be 
strictly  related  to  the  German  text,  but  can 
hardly  be  said  to  be  strictly  English.  With 
a  courtesy  for  which  one  has  little  precedent, 
he  has  permitted  me  on  occasion  to  modify  a 
word  here  and  there  in  my  quotations.  The 
permission  was  unconditional :  my  use  of  it 
has  been  infrequent,  but,  I  think,  requires 
explanation. 

In  '  The  Art-work  of  the  Future  '  Wagner 
defines  art  as  '  an  immediate  vital  act,'  the 
expression  of  man,  as  man  is  the  expression 
of  nature.  'The  first  and  truest  fount  of 
Art  reveals  itself  in  the  impulse  that  urges 
from  Life  into  the  work  of  art ;  for  it  is  the 
impulse  to  bring  the  unconscious,  instinctive 
principle  of  Life  to  understanding  and 
acknowledgment  as  Necessity.'  '  Art  is  an 
inbred  craving  of  the  natural,  genuine,  and 
uncorrupted  man,'  not  an  artificial  product, 
and  not  a  product  of  mind  only,  which  pro- 
duces science,  but  of  that  deeper  impulse 
which  is  unconscious.  From  this  unconscious 
impulse,  this  need,  come  all  great  creations, all 


234       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

great  inventions ;  conscious  intellect  does  but 
exploit  and  splinter  those  direct  impulses 
which  come  straight  from  the  people.  The 
people  alone  can  feel  '  a  common  and  collec- 
tive want ' ;  without  this  want  there  can  be 
no  need  ;  without  need  no  necessary  action  ; 
where  there  is  no  necessary  action,  caprice 
enters,  and  caprice  is  the  mother  of  all 
unnaturalness.  Out  of  caprice,  or  an  imag- 
ined need,  come  luxury,  fashion,  and  the 
whole  art-trafl&c  of  our  shameless  age. 
'  Only  from  Life,  from  which  alone  can  even 
the  need  for  her  grow  up,  can  Art  obtain 
her  matter  and  her  form  ;  but  where  Life  is 
modelled  upon  fashion.  Art  can  never  fashion 
anything  from  Life.' 

In  his  consideration  of  art  Wagner  sets 
down  two  broad  divisions :  art  as  derived 
directly  from  man,  and  art  as  shaped  by 
man  from  the  stuff  of  nature.  In  the  first 
division  he  sets  dance  (or  motion),  tone,  and 
poetry,  in  which  man  is  himself  the  subject 
and  agent  of  his  own  artistic  treatment ; 
in  the  second,  architecture,  sculpture,  and 
painting,  in  which  man  '  extends  the  longing 
for  artistic  portrayal  to  the  objects  of  sur- 
rounding, allied,  ministering  Nature.' 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        235 

The  ground  of  all  human  art  is  bodily 
motion.  Into  bodily  motion  comes  rhythm, 
which  is  *  the  mind  of  dance  and  the  skeleton 
of  tone.'  Tone  is  '  the  heart  of  man,  through 
which  dance  and  poetry  are  brought  to 
mutual  understanding.'  This  organic  being 
is  '  clothed  upon  with  the  flesh  of  the  world.* 
Thus,  in  the  purely  human  arts,  we  rise 
from  bodily  motion  to  poetry,  to  which  man 
adds  himself  as  singer  and  actor;  and  we 
have  at  once  the  lyric  art- work  out  of  which 
comes  the  perfected  form  of  lyric  drama. 
This,  as  he  conceives  it,  is  to  arise  when  '  the 
pride  of  all  three  arts  in  their  own  self- 
sufl&ciency  shall  break  to  pieces  and  pass 
over  into  love  for  one  another.'  Attempts, 
it  is  true,  have  been  made  to  combine  them, 
conspicuously  in  opera;  but  the  failure  of 
opera  comes  from  '  a  compact  of  three 
egoisms,'  without  mutual  giving  as  well  as 
taking. 

The  limits  of  dance  are  evident ;  mere 
motion  can  go  no  further  than  pantomine 
and  ballet.  What  then  are  the  limits  of 
tone  ?  Harmony  is  the  unbounded  sea ; 
rhythm  and  melody,  in  which  dance  and 
poetry  regain   their  own   true  essence,   are 


236       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

the  limiting  shores  to  this  unbounded  sea. 
Yet,  within  the  confines  of  these  shores,  the 
sea  is  for  ever  tossing,  for  ever  falHng  back 
upon  itself.  Christianity  first  set  bounds 
to  it  with  words, '  the  toneless,  fluid,  scatter- 
ing word  of  the  Christian  creed.'  When  the 
limits  of  this  narrow  word  were  broken,  and 
the  sea  again  let  loose,  an  arbitrary  measure 
was  set  upon  it  from  without,  counterpoint, 
'the  mathematics  of  feeling,'  the  claim  of 
tone  to  be  an  end  in  itself,  unrelated  to 
nature,  a  matter  of  the  intellect  instead  of  a 
voice  of  the  heart.  Life,  however,  was  never 
extinct,  for  there  arose  the  folk-tune,  with 
its  twin-born  folk-song ;  which,  however, 
was  seized  upon  by  the  makers  of  music 
and  turned  into  the  '  aria ' :  '  not  the  beat- 
ing heart  of  the  nightingale,  but  only  its 
warbling  throat.'  Then,  out  of  that  unend- 
ing source,  bodily  motion,  expressed  in  the 
rhythm  of  the  dance,  came  the  final  achieve- 
ment of  instrumental  music,  the  symphony, 
which  is  made  on  the  basis  of  the  harmon- 
ised dance.  Beethoven  carries  instrumental 
music  to  the  verge  of  speech,  and  there 
pauses ;  then,  in  the  Ninth  Symphony,  in 
which  he  calls  in  the  word,  '  redeems  music 


THE  IDEAS   OF  WAGNER        237 

out  of  her  own  peculiar  element  into  the 
realm  of  universal  art.'  Beyond  what 
Beethoven  has  there  done  with  music,  'no 
further  step  is  possible,  for  upon  it  the  per- 
fect art- work  of  the  future  alone  can  follow, 
the  universal  drama  to  which  he  has  forged 
for  us  the  key.' 

But  poetry,  has  that  also  its  limits? 
Literary  poetry  still  exists,  even  the  literary 
drama,  written,  as  Goethe  wrote  it,  from 
outside,  as  by  one  playing  on  a  lifeless 
instrument ;  even  '  the  unheard-of,  drama 
written  for  dumb  reading  ! '  But  poetry 
was  once  a  living  thing,  a  thing  spoken  and 
sung ;  it  arose  from  the  midst  of  the  people, 
and  was  kept  alive  by  them,  alike  as  epic, 
lyric,  and  drama.  'Tragedy  flourished  for 
just  so  long  as  it  was  inspired  by  the  spirit 
of  the  people,'  and,  at  its  greatest  moment, 
among  the  Greeks,  '  the  poetic  purpose  rose 
singly  to  life  upon  the  shoulders  of  the  arts 
of  dance  and  tone,  as  the  head  of  the  full- 
fledged  human  being.'  Where  we  see  tragedy 
supreme  in  Shakespeare  and  music  supreme 
in  Beethoven  we  see  two  great  halves  of  one 
universal  whole.  It  remains  for  the  art  of 
the  future  to  combine  these  two  halves  in 


238       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

one ;  and,  in  the  process  of  joining,  all  the 
other  arts,  those  arts  not  derived  directly 
from  man  but  shaped  by  man  from  the  stuff 
of  nature,  will  find  their  place,  as  they  help 
towards  the  one  result. 

The  sections  which  follow,  dealing  with 
architecture,  sculpture,  and  painting,  form  a 
special  pleading  to  which  it  is  hardly  neces- 
sary to  give  much  attention.  Each  art  may 
indeed  legitimately  enough  be  utilised  in 
the  production  and  performance  of  such  an 
art-work  as  Wagner  indicates,  and  as  he 
actually  produced  and  performed ;  architec- 
ture building  the  theatre,  sculpture  teaching 
man  his  own  bodily  beauty,  and  the  beauty 
and  significance  of  his  grouping  and  move- 
ment on  the  stage,  and  painting  creating  a 
landscape  which  shall  seem  to  set  this  human 
figure  in  the  midst  of  nature  itself.  In  going 
further  than  this,  in  asserting  that  sculpture 
is  to  give  place  to  the  human  body,  and 
painting  to  limit  itself  to  the  imitation  of 
nature  as  a  background  of  stage-scenery  for 
the  actor,  we  see  the  German.^    We  see  also 

^  A  more  temperate,  indeed  a  wholly  just  view  of  the 
relations  of  the  plastic  arts,  is  to  be  found  in  the  '  Letter  to 
Liszt  on  the  proposed   Goeihe  Institute,'  written  in   1851 


THE   IDEAS   OF  WAGNER        239 

the  propagandist,  who  has  a  doctrine  to 
prove  ;  perhaps  the  enthusiast,  who  has  con- 
vinced himself  of  what  he  desires  to  beheve. 
In  his  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter  he  goes 
one  step  further,  and  identifies  the  poet  and 
the  performer ;  then  finds  in  the  performer 
'  the  fellowship  of  all  the  artists,'  and,  in 
that  fellowship,  the  community  of  the 
people,  who,  having  felt  the  want,  have 
found  out  the  way.  '  The  perfectly  artistic 
performer  is  therefore  the  unit  man  ex- 
tended to  the  essence  of  the  human  species 
by  the  utmost  evolution  of  his  own  par- 
ticular nature.  The  place  in  which  this 
wondrous  process  comes  to  pass  is  the 
theatric  stage ;  the  collective  art  -  work 
which  it  brings  to  the  light  of  day,  the 
Drama.' 

In  a  letter  to  Berlioz,  written  in  1860, 
Wagoner  reminds  his  critic,  who  has  chosen 
to  fasten  upon  him  the  title,  '  Music  of  the 
Future '  (the  hostile  invention  of  a  Professor 
Bischoff  of  Cologne),    that   the   essay   was 


('Prose  Works,'  iii.  19-20),  where  Wagner  points  out  the 
necessity  of  the  due  and  helpful  subordination  of  painting 
and  sculpture  to  architecture  in  any  complete  and  living 
organism  of  plastic  art. 


240       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

written  at  a  time  when  'a  violent  crisis  in 
his  life'  (the  Revolution  of  1848,  and  his 
exile  from  Germany)  had  for  a  time  with- 
drawn him  from  the  practice  of  his  art.  '  I 
asked  myself/  he  says,  'what  position  Art 
should  occupy  towards  the  public,  so  as  to 
inspire  it  with  a  reverence  that  should  never 
be  profaned ;  and,  not  to  be  merely  building 
castles  in  the  air,  I  took  my  stand  on  the 
position  which  art  once  occupied  towards  the 
public  life  of  the  Greeks.'  In  the  thirty 
thousand  Greeks  assembled  to  listen  to  a 
tragedy  of  ^schylus  he  found  the  one  ideal 
public ;  and,  in  the  whole  situation,  a  sug- 
gestion towards  an  art  which  should  be  no 
pedantic  revival  of  that,  but  a  similar  union 
of  the  arts,  in  the  proportions  demanded  by 
their  present  condition  and  by  the  present 
condition  of  the  world.  For,  as  no  one  has 
realised  more  clearly,  there  is  no  absolute 
art- work ;  but  each  age  must  have  its  own 
art- work,  as  that  of  the  preceding  age  ceases 
to  be  living  and  becomes  monumental.  '  The 
Shakespeare  who  can  alone  be  of  value  to  us 
is  the  ever  new  creative  poet  who,  now  and 
in  all  ages,  is  to  that  age  what  Shakespeare 
was  to  his  own  age.' 


THE  IDEAS   OF  WAGNER        241 

'Opera  and  Drama,'  which  closely  followed 
'  The  Art- work  of  the  Future/  was  written 
at  Zurich  in  four  months ;  it  fills  376  large 
pages  in  Mr.  Ellis's  translation.  In  a  letter 
to  Uhlig,  written  January  20,  1851,  Wagner 
says,  '  The  first  part  is  the  shortest  and 
easiest,  perhaps  also  the  most  entertaining ; 
the  second  goes  deeper,  and  the  third  goes 
right  to  the  bottom.'  In  the  dedication  to 
the  second  edition,  written  in  1868,  he  says, 
'  My  desire  to  get  to  the  bottom  of  the 
matter  and  to  shirk  no  detail  that,  in  my 
opinion,  might  make  the  difficult  subject  of 
sesthetic  analysis  intelligible  to  simple  feel- 
ing betrayed  me  into  a  stubbornness  of  style 
which,  to  the  reader  who  looks  merely  for 
entertainment,  and  is  not  directly  interested 
in  the  subject  itself,  is  extremely  likely  to 
seem  a  bewildering  dilfuseness.'  And  the 
translator  confesses  that  no  other  of  Wag- 
ner's prose  works  has  given  him  half  so 
much  difficulty  as  the  third  and  portions  of 
the  second  part  of  'Opera  and  Drama';  for 
in  them,  as  he  says,  '  we  are  presented  with 
a  theory  absolutely  in  the  making.' 

'Opera  and  Drama'  is  an  attempt  to  state, 
in  minute  particulars,  what '  The  Art- work  of 

Q 


242       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

the  Future '  stated  in  general  terms.  It  is 
based  upon  a  demonstration  of  the  funda- 
mental error  in  the  construction  of  opera  : 
'that  a  means  of  expression  (music)  has 
been  made  the  end,  while  the  end  of  expres- 
sion (drama)  has  been  made  a  means.'  How 
fatal  have  been  the  results  of  this  funda- 
mental error  can  be  realised  only  when  it  is 
seen  how  many  of  the  greater  musicians  have 
thus  spent  their  best  energies  in  exploring  a 
labyrinth  which  does  but  lead  back,  through 
many  vain  wanderings,  to  the  starting- 
point. 

The  musical  basis  of  opera  was  the  aWa, 
i.e.  'the  folk-song  as  rendered  by  the  art- 
singer  before  the  world  of  rank  and  quality, 
but  with  its  word-poem  left  out  and  replaced 
by  the  product  of  the  art -poet  to  that  end 
composed.'  The  performer  was  rightly  the 
basis  of  the  performance,  but  a  basis  set 
awry  ;  for  the  performer  was  chosen  only  for 
his  dexterity  in  song,  not  for  his  skill  as  an 
actor.  Dance  and  dance-tune,  '  borrowed 
just  as  waywardly  from  the  folk-dance  and 
its  tune  as  was  the  operatic  aria  from  the 
folk-song,  joined  forces  with  the  singer  in 
all   the   sterile   immiscibility    of    unnatural 


THE  IDEAS   OF  WAGNER        243 

things/  Between  these  alien  elements  a 
shifting  plank- bridge  was  thrown  across, 
recitative,  which  is  no  more  than  the  in- 
toning of  the  Church,  fixed  by  ritual  into 
'an  arid  resemblance  to,  without  the  reality 
of,  speech,'  and  varied  a  little  by  musical 
caprice  for  the  convenience  of  opera. 

This  unsound  structure  was  untouched  by 
the  theory  and  practice  of  Gluck,  whose 
'  revolution '  was  no  more  than  a  revolt  on 
the  part  of  the  composer  against  the  domina- 
tion of  the  singer.  The  singer  was  made  to 
render  more  faithfully  the  music  which  the 
composer  set  before  him  ;  but  the  poet  '  still 
looked  up  to  the  composer  with  the  deepest 
awe,'  and  no  nearer  approach  was  made  to 
drama.  In  Spontini  we  see  the  logical 
filling  out  of  the  fixed  forms  of  opera  to 
their  fullest  extent.  Along  these  lines 
nothing  further  can  be  done  ;  it  is  for  the 
poet  to  step  into  the  place  usurped  by  the 
musician.  The  poet  did  nothing,  but  still 
continued  to  work  to  order,  not  once  daring 
to  pursue  a  real  dramatic  aim.  He  con- 
tented himself  with  stereotyped  phrases, 
the  make-believe  of  rhetoric,  straitened  to 
the  measure  of  the  musician's  fixed  forms, 


244       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

knowing  that  to  make  his  characters  speak 
'  in  brief  and  definite  terms,  surcharged  with 
meaning,'  would  have  caused  his  instant 
dismissal.  Thus  music,  which  in  the  nature 
of  things  can  only  be  expression,  is  seen 
endeavouring  to  fill  the  place  of  that  which 
is  to  be  expressed,  to  be  itself  its  own 
object.  '  Such  a  music  is  no  longer  any 
music,  but  a  fantastic  hybrid  emanation 
from  poetry  and  music,  which,  in  truth,  can 
only  materialise  itself  as  caricature.' 

Mozart's  importance  in  the  history  of 
opera  is  this,  that,  taking  the  forms  as  he 
found  them,  he  filled  them  with  living 
music,  setting  whatever  words  were  given 
him,  and  giving  those  words  '  the  utmost 
musical  expression  of  which  their  last 
particle  of  sense  was  capable.'  Had  Mozart 
met  a  poet  who  could  have  given  him  the 
foundation  for  his  musical  interpretation,  he 
would  have  solved  the  problem  for  himself, 
unconsciously,  by  mere  sincerity  to  his 
genius  for  musical  expression. 

After  Mozart,  in  whom  form  was  nothing 
and  the  musical  spirit  everything,  came 
imitators  who  fancied  they  were  imitating 
Mozart  when  they  copied  his  form.     It  was 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        245 

E-ossini  who  showed  how  hollow  that  form 
really  was,  and  he  did  so  by  reducing  aria, 
the  essence  of  opera,  to  its  own  real  essence, 
melody.  In  the  folk-song  words  and  tune 
had  always  grown  together ;  in  the  opera 
there  had  been  always  some  pretence  of 
characterisation.  Rossini  abandoned  every- 
thing but  just  'naked,  ear  -  delighting, 
absolute,  melodic  melody,'  a  delicious  mean- 
ingless sound.  '  What  reflection  and 
aesthetic  speculation  had  built  up,  Kossini's 
opera  melodies  pulled  down  and  blew  into 
nothing,  like  a  baseless  dream.'  Rossini 
gave  every  one  what  he  wanted.  He 
gave  the  singer  what  he  wanted,  display; 
and  the  player  what  he  wanted,  again 
display ;  and  the  poet  a  long  rest,  and 
leave  to  rhyme  as  he  chose.  Above  all  he 
gave  the  public  what  it  wanted  :  not  the 
people,  but  that  public  which  need  only  be 
named  to  be  realised,  the  modern  opera 
public.  *  With  Rossini  the  real  life-history  of 
the  opera  comes  to  an  end.  It  was  at  an  end 
when  the  unconscious  seedling  of  its  being 
had  evolved  to  naked  and  conscious  bloom.' 

The  one  genuine,  yet   futile,   attempt  to 
produce  living   opera   was   the   attempt  of 


246       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

Weber,  who  saw  in  opera  only  melody,  and 
who  went  to  the  true  source,  to  the  folk- 
song, for  his  melody.  But  he  saw  only  the 
flower  of  the  woods,  and  plucked  it,  taking 
it  where  it  could  but  fade  and  die,  because 
it  had  lost  the  sustenance  of  its  root.  On 
his  heels  came  Auber,  and  then  Rossini 
himself,  who  pilfered  national  melodies  and 
stuck  them  together  like  a  dressmaker 
giving  variety  to  an  old  dress.  The  chorus 
came  forward,  and  played  at  being  the 
people ;  and  there  was  '  a  motley,  con- 
glomerate surrounding,  without  a  centre  to 
surround.'  Music  tried  to  be  outlandish,  to 
express  nothing,  but  in  a  more  uncommon 
way.  Opera  became  French,  and,  partly 
through  a  misunderstanding  of  Beethoven, 
neo-romantic. 

Until  Beethoven  had  done  what  he  did, 
no  one  could  have  been  quite  certain  '  that 
the  expression  of  an  altogether  definite,  a 
clearly  intelligible  individual  content,  was  in 
truth  impossible  in  this  language  that  had 
only  fitted  itself  for  conveying  the  general 
character  of  an  emotion ' :  the  language, 
that  is,  of  absolute  music.  Beethoven 
attempts  '  to  reach  the  artistically  necessary 


THE   IDEAS   OF  WAGNER        247 

within  an  inartistically  impossible '  ;  he 
chooses,  in  music,  a  form  which  '  often  seems 
the  mere  capricious  venting  of  a  whim,  and 
which,  loosed  from  any  purely  musical  co- 
hesion, is  only  bound  together  by  the  bond 
of  a  poetic  purpose  impossible  to  render  into 
music  with  full  poetic  plainness.'  Thus, 
much  of  his  later  work  seems  to  be  so  many 
sketches  for  a  picture  which  he  could  never 
make  visible  in  all  its  outlines. 

What  in  Beethoven  was  a  '  struggle  for 
the  discovery  of  a  new  basis  of  musical 
language '  has  been  seized  upon  by  later 
composers  only  in  its  external  contrasts, 
excesses,  inarticulate  voices  of  joy  and 
despair,  and  made  the  basis  of  a  wholly 
artificial  construction,  in  which  'a  pro- 
gramme reciting  the  heads  of  some  subject 
taken  from  nature  or  human  life  was  put 
into  the  hearer's  hands ;  and  it  was  left  to 
his  imaginative  talent  to  interpret,  in  keep- 
ing with  the  hint  once  given,  all  the  musical 
freaks  that  one's  unchecked  license  might 
now  let  loose  in  motley  chaos.'  Berlioz 
seized  upon  what  was  most  chaotic  in  the 
sketchwork  of  Beethoven,  and,  using  it  as  a 
misunderstood    magic    symbol,    called    un- 


248       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

natural  visions  about  him.  '  What  he  had 
to  say  to  people  was  so  wonderful,  so 
unwonted,  so  entirely  unnatural,  that  he 
could  never  have  said  it  out  in  homely, 
simple  words  ;  he  needed  a  huge  array  of 
the  most  complicated  machines  in  order  to 
proclaim,  by  the  help  of  many- wheeled  and 
delicately-adjusted  mechanism,  what  a  simple 
human  organism  could  not  possibly  have 
uttered,  just  because  it  was  so  entirely 
unhuman.  .  .  .  Each  height  and  depth  of 
this  mechanism's  capacity  has  Berlioz  ex- 
plored, with  the  result  of  developing  a 
positively  astounding  knowledge ;  and,  if  we 
mean  to  recognise  the  inventors  of  our  pre- 
sent industrial  machinery  as  the  benefactors 
of  modern  State-humanity,  then  we  must 
worship  Berlioz  as  the  veritable  saviour  of 
our  world  of  absolute  music ;  for  he  has 
made  it  possible  to  musicians  to  produce 
the  most  wonderful  effect  from  the  emptiest 
and  most  inartistic  content  of  their  music- 
making,  by  an  unheard-of  marshalling  of 
mere  mechanical  means.' 

In  Berlioz,  Wagner  admits,  '  there  dwelt 
a  genuine  artistic  stress,'  but  Berhoz  was 
but  a  '  tragic  sacrifice.'     His  orchestra  was 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        249 

annexed  by  the  opera-composer;  and  its 
'  splintered  and  atomic  melodies '  were  now 
lifted  from  the  orchestra  into  the  voice 
itself  The  result  was  Meyerbeer,  who, 
when  Wagner  wrote,  could  be  alluded  to, 
without  need  of  naming,  as  the  most  famous 
opera-composer  of  modern  times, 

Weber,  in  '  Euryanthe,'  had  endeavoured 
in  vain  to  make  a  coherent  dramatic  struc- 
ture out  of  two  contradictory  elements, 
'  absolute,  self-sufficing  melody  and  unflinch- 
ingly true  dramatic  expression.'  Meyerbeer 
attempted  the  same  thing  from  the  stand- 
point of  efiect,  and  with  the  aid  of  the 
Rossini  melody.  Thus,  while  '  Weber 
wanted  a  drama  that  could  pass  with  all  its 
members,  with  every  scenic  nuance,  into  his 
noble  soulful  melody,  Meyerbeer,  on  the 
contrary,  wanted  a  monstrous  piebald, 
historico-romantic,  diabolico-religious,  fan- 
atico-libidinous,  sacro-frivolous,  mysterio- 
criminal,  autolyco  -  sentimental,  dramatic 
hotch-potch,  therein  to  find  material  for  a 
curious  chimeric  music  —  a  want  which, 
owing  to  the  indomitable  buckram  of  his 
musical  temperament,  could  never  be  quite 
suitably  supplied.' 


250       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

In  his  summing-up  of  the  whole  discussion 
on  opera  and  the  nature  of  music,  Wagner 
tells  us  that  the  secret  of  the  barrenness  of 
modern  music  lies  in  this,  that  music  is  a 
woman  who  gives  birth  but  does  not  beget. 
'  Just  as  the  living  folk-melody  is  insepar- 
able from  the  living  folk-poem,  at  pain  of 
organic  death,  so  can  music's  organism  never 
bear  the  true,  the  living  melody,  except  it 
first  be  fecundated  by  the  poet's  thought. 
Music  is  the  bearing  woman,  the  poet  the 
begetter ;  and  music  had  therefore  reached 
the  pinnacle  of  madness  when  she  wanted 
not  only  to  bear,  but  to  beget.'  He  now 
turns,  therefore,  to  the  poet. 

The  second  part  of  *  Opera  and  Drama '  is 
concerned  with  '  The  Play,  and  the  Nature 
of  Dramatic  Poetry.'  Wagner  first  clears 
the  way  for  his  theory  by  pointing  out  that 
when  Lessing,  in  his  '  Laocoon,'  mapped  out 
the  boundaries  of  the  arts,  he  was  concerned, 
in  poetry,  only  with  that  art  as  a  thing  to 
be  read,  even  when  he  touches  on  drama ; 
and  that,  figuring  it  as  addressed  wholly  to 
the  imagination,  not  to  the  sight  and  hearing, 
he  was  rightly  anxious  only  to  preserve  its 
purity ;  that  is,  to  make  it  as  easy  as  possible 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        251 

for  the  imagination  to  grasp  it.  But,  just  as 
the  piano  is  an  abstract  and  toneless  reduc- 
tion backward  through  the  organ,  the 
stringed  instrument,  and  the  wind  instru- 
ment, from  the  *  oldest,  truest,  most  beautiful 
organ  of  music,*  the  human  voice,  so,  if  we 
trace  back  the  literary  drama,  or  indeed  any 
form  of  poetry,  we  shall  find  its  origin  in 
the  tone  of  human  speech,  which  is  one  and 
the  same  with  the  singing  tone. 

Modern  drama  has  a  twofold  origin : 
through  Shakespeare  from  the  romance,  and 
through  Racine  from  misunderstood  Greek 
tragedy.  At  the  time  of  the  Renaissance 
poetry  was  found  in  the  narrative  poem, 
which  had  culminated  in  the  fantastic 
romance  of  Ariosto.  To  this  fantastic 
romance  Shakespeare  gave  inner  meaning 
and  outward  show ;  he  took  the  incon- 
sequential and  unlimited  stage  of  the  mum- 
mers and  mystery- players,  narrowed  his 
action  to  the  limits  of  the  spectator's  atten- 
tion, but,  through  the  conditions  of  that 
stage,  left  the  representation  of  the  scene  to 
the  mind's  eye,  and  thus  left  open  a  door  to 
all  that  was  vague  and  unlimited  in  romance 
and    history.      In    France    and    Italy  the 


252       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

drama,  played,  not  before  the  people,  but  in 
princes'  palaces,  was  copied  externally  from 
ancient  drama.  A  fixed  scene  was  taken  as 
its  first  requirement,  and  thus  an  endeavour 
was  made  to  construct  from  without  inwards, 
'  from  mechanism  to  life ' :  talk  on  the  scene, 
action  behind  the  scene.  Drama  passed 
over  into  opera,  which  was  thus  '  the  pre- 
mature bloom  on  an  unripe  fruit,  grown 
from  an  unnatural,  artificial  soil.' 

It  was  in  Germany,  in  whose  soil  the 
drama  has  never  taken  root,  that  a  mongrel 
thing,  which  is  still  rampant  on  the  Euro- 
pean stage,  came  into  being.  When  Shake- 
speare was  brought  over  to  Germany,  where 
the  opera  was  already  in  possession  of  the 
stage,  an  attempt  was  made  to  actualise  his 
scenes,  upon  which  it  was  discovered  that 
dramatised  history  or  romance  was  only 
possible  so  long  as  the  scene  need  only  be 
suggested.  In  the  attempt  to  actualise 
Shakespeare's  mental  pictures,  all  the  re- 
sources of  mechanism  were  employed  in 
vain ;  and  the  plays  themselves  were  cut 
and  altered  in  order  to  bring  them  within 
the  range  of  a  possible  realistic  representa- 
tion.    It  was  seen  that  the  drama  of  Shake- 


THE   IDEAS   OF   WAGNER         253 

speare  could  only  be  realised  under  its  prim- 
itive conditions,  with  the  scene  left  wholly 
to  the  imagination.     Embodied,  it  became, 
so  far  as  embodiment  was  possible,  '  an  un- 
surveyable  mass  of  realisms  and  actualisms.' 
It  therefore  remained  evident   that   the 
nature  of  romance  can  never  wholly  corre- 
spond with  the  nature  of  drama  ;  that,  as  an 
art  in  which  drama  was  at  once  its  inner 
essence  and  its  embodied  representation,  the 
drama  of  Shakespeare  remained,  as  a  form, 
imperfect.     The  result  of  this  consciousness 
was    that    the   poet    either   wrote   literary 
dramas  for  reading,  or  attempted  an   arti- 
ficial reconstruction  of  the  antique.     Such 
was   the   drama    of    Goethe    and    Schiller. 
Goethe,  after  repeated   attempts,  produces 
his  only  organic  work  in  '  Faust,'  which  is 
dramatic    only   in  form,    and   in    '  Wilhelm 
Meister,'  which  returns  frankly  to  romance. 
Schiller  '  hovers  between  heaven  and  earth  ' 
in  an  attempt  to  turn  history  into  romance 
and  romance  into  classical  drama.      Both, 
and  all  that  resulted  from  both,  prove  '  that 
our    literary   drama   is   every  whit   as   far 
removed   from   the  genuine    drama  as   the 
pianoforte    from     the    symphonic    song    of 


254       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

human  voices ;  that  in  the  modern  drama 
we  can  arrive  at  the  production  of  poetry 
only  by  the  most  elaborate  devices  of  literary 
mechanism,  just  as  on  the  pianoforte  we 
only  arrive  at  the  production  of  music 
through  the  most  complicated  devices  of 
technical  mechanism — in  either  case,  a  soul- 
less poetry,  a  toneless  music' 

The  stuff  of  the  modern  drama,  then, 
being  romance,  what  is  the  difference 
between  this  romance  and  the  myth  which 
was  the  stuff  of  ancient  Greek  drama  ? 
Myth  Wagner  defines  as  'the  poem  of  a 
life- view  in  common,'  the  instinctive  creation 
of  the  imagination  of  primitive  man  working 
upon  his  astonished  and  uncomprehending 
view  of  natural  phenomena.  '  The  incompar- 
able thing  about  the  mythos  is  that  it  is  true 
for  all  time,  and  its  content,  how  close  soever 
its  compression,  is  inexhaustible  throughout 
the  ages.'  The  poet's  business  was  merely 
to  expound  the  myth  by  expressing  it  in 
action,  an  action  which  should  be  con- 
densed and  unified  from  it,  as  it,  in  its  turn, 
had  been  a  condensation  and  unification  of 
the  primitive  view  of  nature. 

The  romance  of  the  Middle  Ages  is  derived 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        255 

from  the  mingling  of  two  mythic  cycles,  the 
Christian  legend  and  the  Germanic  saga. 
Christian  legend  can  only  present  pictures, 
or,  transfigured  by  music,  render  moments 
of  ecstasy,  which  must  remain  '  blends  of 
colour  without  drawing.'  The  essence  of 
drama  is  living  action,  in  its  progress  towards 
a  clearly  defined  end  ;  whereas  Christianity, 
being  a  passage  through  life  to  the  trans- 
figuration of  death,  '  must  perforce  begin 
with  the  storm  of  life,  to  weaken  down  its 
movement  to  the  final  swoon  of  dying  out.' 
The  Germanic  saga  begins  with  a  myth 
older  than  Christianity,  then,  when  Chris- 
tianity has  seized  upon  it,  becomes  'a  swarm 
of  actions  whose  true  idea  appears  to  us  un- 
fathomable and  capricious,  because  their 
motives,  resting  on  a  view  of  life  quite  alien 
to  the  Christian's,  had  been  lost  to  the  poet.' 
Foreign  stuffs  are  patched  upon  it ;  and  it 
becomes  wholly  unreal  and  outlandish,  a 
medley  of  adventures,  from  whose  imaginary 
pictures,  however,  men  turned  to  track  them 
in  reality,  by  voyages  of  discovery,  and  by 
the  scientific  discoveries  of  the  intellect. 
Nature,  meanwhile,  unchanged,  awaits  a  new 
interpretation. 


256       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

The  first  step  in  this  interpretation  is  to 
seize  and  represent  actual  things  as  they 
are,  individually.  History  comes  forward 
with  a  more  bewildering  mass  of  material 
than  fancy  had  ever  found  for  itself;  and 
from  this  tangle  of  conditions  and  surround- 
ings the  essence  of  the  man  is  to  be  un- 
ravelled. This  can  be  done  by  the  romance 
writer,  not  by  the  dramatist.  The  drama, 
which  is  organic,  presupposes  all  those  sur- 
roundings which  it  is  the  business  of  the 
romance  writer  to  develop  before  us.  The 
romance  writer  works  from  without  inwards, 
the  dramatist  from  within  outwards.  And 
now,  going  one  step  further,  and  turning  to 
actual  life  as  it  exists  before  our  eyes,  the 
poet  can  no  longer  'extemporise  artistic 
fancies ' ;  he  can  only  render  the  whole 
horror  of  what  lies  naked  before  him ;  '  he 
needs  only  to  feel  pity,  and  at  once  his 
passion  becomes  a  vital  force.'  Actual 
things  draw  him  out  of  the  contemplation 
of  actual  things ;  the  poem  turns  to  jour- 
nalism, the  stuff  of  poetry  becomes  politics. 

It  was  Napoleon  who  said  to  Goethe  that, 
in  the  modern  world,  politics  play  the  part 
of  fate  in  the  ancient  world.     '  The  Greek 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        257 

Fate  is  the  inner  nature- necessity,  from 
which  the  Greek — because  he  did  not  under- 
stand it — sought  refuge  in  the  arbitrary 
political  state.  Our  Fate  is  the  arbitrary 
political  state,  which  to  us  shows  itself  as 
an  outer  necessity  for  the  maintenance  of 
society ;  and  from  this  we  seek  refuge 
in  the  nature-necessity,  because  we  have 
learnt  to  understand  the  latter,  and  have 
recognised  it  as  the  conditionment  of  our 
being  and  all  its  shapings.'  In  the  myth 
of  (Edipus  is  seen  a  prophetic  picture  of 
the  '  whole  history  of  mankind,  from  the 
beginnings  of  society  to  the  inevitable 
downfall  of  the  state.'  The  modern  state 
is  a  necessity  of  an  artificial  and  inorganic 
kind ;  it  is  not,  as  society  (arising  from  the 
family,  and  working  through  love  rather 
than  through  law)  should  rightly  be,  '  the 
free  self-determining  of  the  individuality.' 
Within  these  artificial  bounds  of  the  state 
only  thought  is  free ;  and  the  poet  who 
would  render  the  conflict  of  the  individual 
and  of  the  state  must  content  himself  with 
appealing  to  the  understanding ;  he  cannot 
appeal  to  the  understanding  through  the 
feeUng.     Dramatic  art  is  '  the  emotionalis- 

B 


258       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

ing  of  the  intellect,'  for,  in  drama,  the  appeal 
is  made  directly  to  the  senses  and  can  com- 
pletely realise  its  aim.  '  In  drama,  there- 
fore, an  action  can  only  be  explained  when 
it  is  completely  justified  by  the  feeling  ;  and 
it  is  thus  the  dramatic  poet's  task  not  to 
invent  actions  but  to  make  an  action  so 
intelligible  through  its  emotional  necessity 
that  we  may  altogether  dispense  with  the 
intellect's  assistance  in  its  justification.  The 
poet,  therefore,  has  to  make  his  main  scope 
the  choice  of  the  action,  which  he  must  so 
choose  that,  alike  in  its  character  and  in  its 
compass,  it  makes  possible  to  him  its  entire 
justification  by  the  feeling,  for  in  this  justi- 
fication alone  resides  the  reaching  of  his 
aim.'  This  action  he  cannot  find  in  the 
present,  where  the  fundamental  relations 
are  no  longer  to  be  seen  in  their  simple  and 
natural  growth  ;  nor  in  the  past,  as  recorded 
by  history,  where  an  action  can  only  become 
intelligible  to  us  through  a  detailed  ex- 
planation of  its  surroundings.  It  must  be 
found  in  a  new  creation  of  myth,  and  this 
myth  must  arise  from  a  condensation  into 
one  action  of  the  image  of  all  man's  energy, 
together  with   his   recognition  of   his  own 


THE   IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        259 

mood  in  nature,  nature  apprehended,  not  in 
parts  by  the  understanding,  but  as  a  whole 
by  the  feeling.  This  strengthening  of  a 
moment  of  action  can  only  be  achieved  '  by 
lifting  it  above  the  ordinary  human  measure 
through  the  poetic  figment  of  wonder.' 
'Poetic  wonder  is  the  highest  and  most 
necessary  product  of  the  artist's  power  of 
beholding  and  displaying.  ...  It  is  the 
fullest  understanding  of  Nature  that  first 
enables  the  poet  to  set  her  phenomena 
before  us  in  wondrous  shaping  :  for  only  in 
such  shaping  do  they  become  intelligible  to 
us  as  the  conditionments  of  human  actions 
intensified.'  The  motives  which  tend  to- 
wards this  supreme  moment  of  action  are  to 
be  condensed  and  absorbed  into  one  ;  and 
from  this  one  motive  '  all  that  savours  of  the 
particular  and  accidental  must  be  taken 
away,  and  it  must  be  given  its  full  truth 
as  a  necessary,  purely  human  utterance  of 
feeling.' 

Only  in  tone-speech  can  this  fully  realised 
utterance  of  feeling  be  made.  Modern 
speech,  alike  in  prose  and  in  the  modern 
form  of  verse,  in  which  '  Stabreim,'  or  the 
root  alliteration  by  which  words  were  once 


260       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

fused  with  melody,  has  given  place  to  end- 
rhyme  ('fluttering  at  the  loose  ends  of  the 
ribands  of  melody'),  is  no  longer  able  to 
speak  to  the  feeling,  but  only  to  the  under- 
standing, and  this  through  a  convention  by 
which  we  '  dominate  our  feelings  that  we 
may  demonstrate  to  the  understanding  an 
aim  of  the  understandiog.'  Speech,  there- 
fore, has  shrunk  to  '  absolute  intellectual 
speech,'  as  music  has  shrunk  to  '  absolute 
tone-speech.'  The  poet  can  thus  only  ade- 
quately realise  his  '  strengthened  moments 
of  action '  by  a  speech  proportionately  raised 
above  its  habitual  methods  of  expression. 
Tone-speech  is  this  '  new,  redeeming,  and 
realising  tongue ' ;  tone-speech  not  separ- 
ately made,  an  emotional  expression  un- 
governed  by  this  aim  (as  we  see  it  in 
modern  opera),  but  tone-speech  which  is  the 
fullest  expression  of  this  aim,  and  thus  '  the 
expression  of  the  most  deeply  roused  human 
feelings,  according  to  their  highest  power  of 
self-expression.' 

Wagner  now  passes,  in  the  third  part,  to  a 
consideration  of '  The  Arts  of  Poetry  and  Tone 
in  the  Drama  of  the  Future.'  He  begins  by 
pointing  out  in  minute  detail,  through  the 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        261 

physiology  of  speech  (the  actual  making  of 
speech  by  breath),  that  it  is  only  from  a 
heightening  of  ordinary  speech,  and  not 
from  the  recognised  prosody  of  verse,  that 
we  can  hope  to  find  the  means  of  ultimate 
expression  ;  and  that,  our  language  having 
lost  all  direct  means  of  emotional  appeal,  we 
must  go  back  to  its  very  roots  before  we 
can  fit  it  to  combine  with  that  tone-speech 
which  does  possess  such  an  appeal.  He 
shows  that  i/he  metre  of  Greek  choric  verse 
can  only  properly  be  understood  by  taking 
into  account  its  musical  accompaniment,  by 
which  a  long-held  note  could  be  justified  to 
the  ear.  That  these  lyrics  were  written  to 
fixed  tunes,  tunes  probably  fixed  by  dance 
movements,  is  evident  from  the  great  elabo- 
ration of  a  rhythm  which  could  never  have 
arisen  directly  out  of  the  substance  of  poems 
so  largely  grave  and  philosophic.  The  oldest 
lyric  arises  out  of  tone  and  melody,  in  which 
human  emotion  at  first  uttered  itself  in  the 
mere  breathing  of  the  vowels,  then  through 
the  individualisation  of  the  vowels  by  con- 
sonants. In  a  word-root  we  have  not  only 
the  appeal  to  thought  of  that  root's  mean- 
ing,  but   also  the  sensuous   appeal   of  the 


262       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

open  sound  which  is  its  '  sensuous  body '  and 
primal  substance.  Tone,  with  its  appeal  to 
feeling,  begins  by  passing  into  the  word, 
with  its  appeal  to  the  understanding ;  the 
final  return  is  that  of  the  word,  through 
harmony,  to  that  tone-speech  in  which  the 
understanding  is  reached  through  the  feel- 
ing, and  both  are  satisfied. 

Primitive  melodies  rarely  modulate  from 
one  key  into  another ;  and,  if  we  wish  to 
address  the  feeling  intelligibly  through  tone 
alone,  we  must  return  to  this  simplicity  of 
key.  This  Beethoven  did  in  the  melody 
to  which  he  set  Schiller's  verse  in  the 
Ninth  Symphony ;  but  if  we  compare  this, 
in  its  original  form,  with  the  broad  melodic 
structure  of  the  musical  setting  of  the  line, 
'  Seid  umschlungen,  Millionen  ! '  we  shall 
see  the  whole  difference  between  a  melody 
which  is  made  separately  and,  so  to  speak, 
laid  upon  the  verse,  and  a  melody  which 
grows  directly  out  of  the  verse  itself.  It  is 
the  poetic  aim  which  causes  and  justifies 
modulation,  for  by  it  the  change  and  grada- 
tion of  emotion  can  be  rendered  intelligible 
to  the  feeling.  Harmony  is  'the  bearing 
element   which    takes    up    the    poetic   aim 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        263 

solely  as  a  begetting  seed,  to  shape  it  into 
finished  semblance  by  the  prescripts  of  its 
own,  its  womanly  organism.'  Modern  music 
has  taken  harmony  as  sufficient  in  itself,  and 
by  so  doing  has  but  '  worked  bewilderingly 
and  benumbingly  upon  the  feeling.'  The 
tone-poet  must,  instead,  add  to  a  melody, 
conditioned  by  its  speaking  verse,  the  har- 
mony implicitly  contained  therein.  Now 
'  harmony  is  in  itself  a  thing  of  thought ;  to 
the  senses  it  becomes  first  actually  dis- 
cernible as  polyphony,  or,  to  define  it  still 
more  closely,  as  polyphonic  symphony.' 
This,  for  the  purposes  of  the  drama,  cannot 
be  supplied  by  vocal  symphony,  because 
each  voice,  in  a  perfectly  proportioned 
action,  can  but  be  the  expression  of  an 
individual  character,  present  on  the  stage 
for  his  own  ends,  and  not  as  a  mere  vocal 
support  for  others.  '  Only  in  the  full  tide 
of  lyric  outpour,  when  all  the  characters 
and  their  surroundings  have  been  strictly 
led  up  to  a  joint  expression  of  feeling,  is 
there  offered  to  the  tone-poet  a  polyphonic 
mass  of  voices  to  which  he  may  make  over 
the  declaration  of  his  harmony.*  Only  by 
the  orchestra  can  it  find  expression,  for  the 


264       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

orchestra  is  *  the  realised  thought '  of  har- 
mony. 

The  timbre  of  the  human  voice  can  never 
absolutely  blend  with  that  of  any  instru- 
ment ;  it  is  the  duty  of  the  orchestra  to 
subordinate  itself  to,  and  support,  the  vocal 
melody,  never  actually  mingling  with  it. 
The  orchestra  possesses  a  distinct  faculty  of 
speech, '  the  faculty  of  uttering  the  unspeak- 
able,' or  rather  that  which,  to  our  intellect, 
is  the  unspeakable.  This  faculty  it  possesses 
in  common  with  gesture,  which  expresses 
something  that  cannot  be  expressed  in 
words.  The  orchestra  expresses  to  the  ear 
what  gesture  expresses  to  the  eye,  and  both 
combined  carry  on  or  lead  up  to  what  the 
verse-melody  expresses  in  words.  It  is  able 
to  transform  thought  ('the  bond  between  an 
absent  and  a  present  emotion ')  into  an 
actually  present  emotion.  'Music  cannot 
think,  but  she  can  materialise  thoughts.  A 
musical  motive  can  produce  a  definite  im- 
pression on  the  feeling,  inciting  it  to  a 
function  akin  to  thought,  only  when  the 
emotion  uttered  in  that  motive  has  been 
definitely  conditioned  by  a  definite  object 
and    proclaimed    by   a    definite    individual 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        265 

before  our  very  eyes.'  The  orchestra,  then, 
can  express  foreboding  or  remembrance,  and 
it  can  do  this  with  perfect  clearness  and 
direct  appeal  to  the  emotions  by  the  recur- 
rence of  a  musical  motive  which  we  have 
already  associated  with  a  definite  emotion, 
or  whose  significance  is  interpreted  to  us 
by  a  definite  gesture.  What  has  been  called 
tone-painting  in  instrumental  music  is  an 
attempt  to  do  this  by  the  suggestion  of 
tones,  or  with  the  aid  of  a  written  pro- 
gramme ;  in  either  case  by  a  '  chilling ' 
appeal  to  mere  fancy  in  place  of  feeling. 
*The  life-giving  focus  of  dramatic  expres- 
sion is  the  verse -melody  of  the  performer ; 
towards  it  the  absolute  orchestral  melody 
leads  on,  as  a  foreboding ;  from  it  is  led 
the  instrumental-motive's  "thought,"  as  a 
remembrance.'  In  order  to  arrive  at  perfect 
unity  of  form  and  content  there  must  be 
something  more  than  a  mere  juxtaposition 
of  poetic  and  musical  expression,  or  the 
musician  will  have  roused  a  feeling  in  vain, 
and  the  poet  will  have  failed  to  fix  this 
feeling  incompletely  roused.  Unity  can  be 
secured  only  when  the  expression  fully 
renders  the  content,  and  renders  it  unceas- 


266       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

ingly ;  and  this  can  be  done  only  when  the 
poet's  aim  and  the  musician's  expression  are 
so  blended  that  neither  can  be  distinguished 
from  the  other,  '  the  chief  motives  of  the 
dramatic  action,  having  become  distinguish- 
able melodic  moments  which  fully  materialise 
their  content,  being  moulded  into  a  con- 
tinuous '  texture,  binding  the  whole  art- 
work together,  and,  in  the  final  result, 
the  orchestra  so  completely  '  guiding  our 
whole  attention  away  from  itself  as  a  means 
of  expression,  and  directing  it  to  the  object 
expressed,'  that,  in  a  sense,  it  shall  not  '  be 
heard  at  all.'  Thus,  at  its  height  of  realised 
achievement,  'art  conceals  art.' 


Ill 


This,  then,  was  the  task  to  which  Wagner 
addressed  himself;  this  was  his  ideal,  and 
this  remains  his  achievement.  We  have 
seen  how  wholly  the  theory  was  an  outcome 
of  the  work  itself;  and  Wagner  assures  us 
that  he  brought  on  '  a  fit  of  brain  cramp '  by 
his  endeavour  to  '  treat  as  a  theorem  a  thing 
which  had  become  quite  clear  and  certain  to 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        267 

him  in  his  artistic  intention  and  production.' 
The  theory  came  out  of  the  preliminary 
labour  at  what  afterwards  became  the  *  Ring 
des  Nibelungen.'  It  was  in  the  midst  of 
that  long  labour  that,  as  we  know,  he 
stopped  to  write  '  Tristan ' ;  we  know  now, 
since  the  publication  of  the  letters  to 
Mathilde  Wesendonck,  why  he  stopped,  and 
why  he  '  clean  forgot  every  theory '  in  the 
calm  fever  of  that  creation,  'to  such  an 
extent  that  during  the  working  out  I  my- 
self was  aware  of  how  far  I  had  outstripped 
my  system.' 

What  Coleridge  said  of  Wordsworth  may 
be  applied  even  more  fitly  to  Wagner  :  '  He 
had,  like  all  great  artists,  to  create  the  taste 
by  which  he  was  to  be  realised,  to  teach  the 
art  by  which  he  was  to  be  seen  and  judged.' 
Thus  we  see  him  first  of  all  explaining  him- 
self to  himself  before  he  explains  himself  to 
the  world ;  and,  in  this  final  explanation, 
giving  no  place  to  the  thinker's  vanity  in 
thought  or  the  artist's  in  self-consciousness, 
but  making  an  appeal  for  help,  a  kind  of 
persistent  expostulation.  Wagner  wanted 
people  to  understand  him  in  order  that 
they  might  carry  out  his  ideas,  that  par- 


268       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

ticular  part  of  his  ideas  which  he  was 
powerless  to  carry  out  without  their  aid. 
He  was  creating  the  '  art  -  work  of  the 
future,'  the  work  itself  which  he  had  once 
dreamed  was  to  be  the  spontaneous  and 
miraculous  outcome  of  his  ideal  '  commu- 
nity ' ;  he  still  wanted  to  make  that  com- 
munity come  to  him ;  he  believed  in  it 
until  belief  was  quite  worn  out ;  and  we  see 
him,  in  essay  after  essay,  expecting  less  and 
less,  as  revolution  has  brought  it  no  nearer 
to  him,  and  '  German  policy '  has  brought  it 
no  nearer.  At  last  he  sees  only  two  possi- 
bilities :  one,  a  private  association  of  art- 
loving  men  and  women,  and  he  doubts  if 
enough  lovers  of  art  are  to  be  found ;  the 
other,  a  German  prince,  who  would  devote 
his  opera-budget  to  the  creation  of  a  national 
art.  '  Will  this  prince  be  found  ? '  he  asks, 
not  expecting  an  answer ;  and  he  adds : 
'  Patience  and  long-suffering  have  worn  me 
out.  I  no  longer  hope  to  live  out  the  pro- 
duction of  my  "  Biihnenfestspiel."  '  This  is 
in  1863.  The  prince  was  at  hand:  'for  it 
was  indeed  a  king  who  called  to  me  in 
chaos  :  "  Hither !  Complete  thy  work  !  I 
will  it  I  •" 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        269 

What  was  begun  in  1864  by  King  Ludwig 
of  Bavaria  had  to  wait  many  years  for  its 
completion ;  and  that  completion  was  to 
come  about  by  the  additional  help  of  a 
private  association  of  art-lovers,  of  whose 
existence  Wagner  had  doubted.  Nothiug 
ever  came  from  any  '  community ' ;  and 
Wagner,  like  all  other  believers  in  'the 
people,'  had  to  realise  in  the  end  that  art, 
in  our  days,  can  be  helped  only  by  a  few 
powerful  individuals :  a  king,  a  popular 
favourite  like  Liszt,  an  enthusiastic  woman 
like  the  Countess  von  Schleinitz.  In  the 
modern  world  money  is  power  ;  and  with 
money  even  Bayreuth  may  be  forced  upon 
the  world.  It  must  be  forced  upon  it ;  it 
will  not  be  chosen ;  afterwards,  the  thing 
once  done,  the  public  will  follow ;  for  the 
public,  like  the  work  itself,  has  to  be 
created.  Having  failed  to  produce  his 
art-work  with  the  help  of  the  public, 
Wagner  proceeded  to  produce  a  public 
with  the  help  of  the  art- work.  He  built 
Bayreuth  for  the  production  of  his  own 
works  in  his  own  way,  and  arranged,  down 
to  the  minutest  details,  the  manner  of  their 
representation. 


270       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

Few  of  Wagner's  theories  were  not  the 
growth  of  many  times  and  many  ideas. 
The  idea,  or  first  glimpse,  of  Bayreuth 
itself  may  perhaps  be  found,  as  Mr.  Ashton 
Ellis  finds  it,  in  a  flourish  of  mere  rhetoric 
in  one  of  Berlioz's  articles  in  the  '  Gazette 
Musicale,'  which  Wagner  caught  up  in  one 
of  his  own  articles  of  that  year  (1841) :  'So 
Berlioz  lately  dreamed  of  what  he  would  do 
were  he  one  of  those  unfortunate  beings 
who  pay  five  hundred  francs  for  the  sing- 
ing of  a  romance  not  worth  five  sous ;  he 
would  take  the  finest  orchestra  in  the  world 
to  the  ruins  of  Troy  to  play  to  him  the 
Sinfonia  Eroica.'  It  had  always  been  Wag- 
ner's desire  that  all  the  seats  in  his  theatre 
should  be  equalised,  and,  if  possible,  that 
they  should  be  free.  It  was  not  possible ; 
and  the  uniform  price  of  seats  had  to  be  a 
high  one ;  but  in  the  '  stipendiary  fund,' 
formed  at  Wagner's  express  wish,  not  long 
before  his  death  (by  which  free  seats  and 
travelling  expenses  are  still  given  to  a  cer- 
tain number  of  poor  musicians),  we  find 
some  approximation  towards  his  original 
desire.  The  advisability  of  the  form  of  the 
amphitheatre,  with  its  consequent  equalising 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        271 

of  seats  and  prices,  had  been  discerned  by 
Wagner  at  least  as  early  as  1851,  when, 
in  'A  Communication  to  my  Friends,' 
he  describes  the  modern  opera  -  house, 
with  its  threefold  and  mutually  contra- 
dictory appeal  to  the  gallery,  the  pit, 
and  the  boxes,  'the  vulgar,  the  Philistine, 
and  the  exquisite,  thrown  into  one  common 
pot.' 

But  it  was  a  need  even  more  fundamental 
which  finally  brought  about  the  exact  shape 
of  the  Bayreuth  theatre  :  the  need,  whose 
importance  gradually  grew  upon  him,  of 
having  the  orchestra  out  of  sight,  and  sunk 
below  the  level  of  the  stage.  The  first  con- 
sciousness of  this  need  is  seen  in  one  of 
those  feuilletons,  written  in  1840  or  1841, 
which  Wagner  afterwards  brought  together 
under  the  title,  'A  German  Musician  in 
Paris.'  Here  he  comments,  in  passing,  on 
the  distraction  and  unloveliness  of  '  seeing 
music  as  well  as  hearing  it,'  and  on  the 
amazing  people  who  like  to  sit  as  near  the 
orchestra  as  possible  in  order  to  watch  the 
movements  of  the  fiddles  and  to  wait  on  the 
next  beat  of  the  kettle-drum.  In  1849,  in 
'  The  Art-work  of  the  Future,'  he  symbolises 


272       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

the  orchestra  as  *the  loam  of  endless  uni- 
versal feeling,'  from  which  renewed  strength 
is  to  be  drawn,  as  Antaeus  drew  a  renewal 
of  strength  from  contact  with  the  earth. 
As  such,  and  '  by  its  essence  diametrically 
opposed  to  the  scenic  landscape  which  sur- 
rounds the  actor/  it  is,  'as  to  locality, 
most  rightly  placed  in  the  deepened  fore- 
ground outside  the  scenic  frame,'  to  which 
it  forms  'the  perfect  complement,'  the  under- 
current. 

In  the  preface  to  the  poem  of  '  The  Ring ' 
(1863),  in  which  the  Bayreuth  idea  is 
definitely  proposed,  Wagner  dwells  in  more 
detail  on  the  advantages  of  an  invisible 
orchestra.  In  1873,  in  the  'report'  on  Bay- 
reuth, he  points  out  how  the  desire  to 
render  the  mechanical  means  of  the  music 
invisible  had  led  step  by  step  to  the  trans- 
formation of  the  whole  auditorium.  As  the 
first  necessity  was  that  the  orchestra  should 
be  sunk  so  deep  that  no  one  in  the  audience 
could  look  down  into  it,  it  was  evident  that 
the  seats  would  have  to  be  arranged  tier 
above  tier,  in  gradually  ascending  rows, 
'  their  ultimate  height  to  be  governed  solely 
by  the  possibility  of  a  distinct  view  of  the 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        273 

scenic  picture/  In  order  to  frame  in  the 
empty  space  between  the  stage  and  the  first 
row  of  seats  ('  the  mystic  gulf,'  as  Wagner 
called  it,  because  it  had  to  divide  the  real 
from  the  ideal  world),  a  second  wider  pro- 
scenium was  set  up,  which  threw  back  the 
stage  picture  into  a  further  depth  (as 
Whistler  would  have  easel  pictures  thrown 
back  into  the  depths  of  the  frame,  '  the 
frame  being  the  window  through  which  the 
painter  looks  at  his  model ').  A  difficulty, 
caused  by  the  side- walls  of  the  audi- 
torium, suggested  a  further  development  of 
this  scheme ;  and  proscenium  after  prosce- 
nium was  added  through  the  whole  interior, 
in  the  form  of  broadening  rows  of  columns, 
which  framed  it  into  a  single  vista,  widen- 
ing gradually  outwards  from  the  stage. 
Thus,  for  the  first  time  in  the  modern  world, 
a  literal  '  theatron,'  or  looking-room,  had 
been  constructed,  solely  for  the  purpose  of 
looking,  and  of  looking  in  one  direction 
only. 

Wagner's  attitude  towards  the  public  was 
never  intentionally  an  autocratic  one.  His 
whole  conception  of  art  was  unselfish,  never 
in  any  narrow  sense  '  art  for  art's  sake,'  but 

s 


274       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

art  concealing  art  for  the  joy  of  the  world. 
Certainly  no  one  in  modern  times  has 
longed  so  ardently,  or  laboured  so  hard, 
that  the  whole  world  might  see  itself  trans- 
figured in  art  and  might  rejoice  in  that 
transfiguration.  Is  not  his  whole  aim  that 
of  universal  art  ?  and  can  art  be  universal 
except  through  universality  of  delight? 
His  dissatisfaction  with  the  performances  of 
his  own  works  in  the  ordinary  theatres  arose 
from  the  impossibility  of  directly  addressing 
the  actual  feeling  of  the  public  through 
those  conditions.  When  one  of  his  operas 
has  at  last  had  a  clamorous  success,  he  is 
dissatisfied,  because  he  is  conscious  that  its 
meaning  has  not  been  rightly  apprehended. 
He  does  not  want  to  be  admired,  as  strange 
things  are  admired ;  but  to  be  understood, 
and,  being  understood,  to  be  loved,  and  thus 
to  become  a  living  bond  between  art  and 
the  world.  In  a  footnote  to  '  Opera  and 
Drama '  he  says  emphatically  : — '  By  this 
term,  the  public,  I  can  never  think  of  those 
units  who  employ  their  abstract  art-intel- 
ligence to  make  themselves  familiar  with 
things  which  are  never  realised  upon  the 
stage.     By  the  public  I  mean  that  assem- 


THE   IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        275 

blage  of  spectators  without  any  specifically 
cultivated  art-understanding,  to  whom  the 
represented  drama  should  come  for  their 
complete,  their  entirely  toilless,  emotional 
understanding ;  spectators,  therefore,  whose 
interest  should  never  be  led  to  the  mere  art 
media  employed,  but  solely  to  the  artistic 
object  realised  thereby,  to  the  drama  as  a 
represented  action,  intelligible  to  every  one. 
Since  the  public,  then,  is  to  enjoy  without 
the  sHghtest  effort  of  an  art-intelligence,  its 
claims  are  grievously  slighted  when  the  per- 
formance does  not  realise  the  dramatic  aim.' 
Bayreuth  is  the  endeavour  to  satisfy  the 
legitimate,  unrecognised,  often  disputed 
rights,  not  of  the  artist,  as  an  outside 
solitary  individual,  but  of  the  public,  of 
which  the  artist  is  himself  to  become  a  sym- 
pathetic and  more  conscious  member.  Do 
we  not  here  return,  very  significantly,  to 
what  seemed  like  words  in  the  air  in  that 
conclusion  of  '  The  Art-work  of  the  Future,' 
where  the  creative  artist  identifies  himself 
with  the  performer,  and  the  performer  be- 
comes, or  typifies,  '  the  unit  man  expanded 
to  the  essence  of  the  human  species '  ? 


276       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

IV 

In  the  realising  of  this  achievement,  as  we 
have  seen  from  '  The  Art-work  of  the 
Future '  and  '  Opera  and  Drama/  Wagner 
demanded,  in  the  combination  of  the  arts, 
two  main  factors :  poetry,  carried  to  its 
utmost  limits  in  drama ;  and  music  carried 
to  its  utmost  limits  as  the  interpreter  and 
deepener  of  dramatic  action.  In  one  of  the 
admirable  letters  to  Mathilde  Wesendonck, 
Wagner  delights  quite  frankly  in  the 
thought  that  no  one  could  so  fitly  supple- 
ment Schopenhauer's  theory  of  music, 
because,  '  there  never  was  another  man  who 
was  a  poet  and  a  musician  at  once.'  It  is 
this  double  faculty  which  permitted  him  to 
achieve  the  whole  of  his  aim,  and  it  is 
through  his  possession  of  this  double  faculty 
that  his  ideas  about  music  and  about  drama 
are  almost  equally  significant  and  funda- 
mental. We  shall  be  more  likely  to  realise 
their  full  meaning  if  we  take  them,  not,  as 
he  generally  insisted  on  taking  them, 
together,  but,  as  far  as  we  can,  separately ; 
and  we  will  begin,  as  he  began,  with  the 
foundation  of  his  scheme,  with  drama. 


THE   IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        277 

Drama,  '  the  one,  indivisible,  supreme 
creation  of  the  mind  of  man,'  was,  as  we 
know,  celebrated  by  the  Greeks  as  a 
religious  festival.  Now,  as  in  ancient 
Greece,  the  theatre  is  the  chronicle  and 
epitome  of  the  age ;  but  with  what  a 
difference !  With  us,  in  the  most  serious 
European  countries,  religion  is  forbidden  to 
be  dealt  with  on  the  stage ;  '  our  evil 
conscience  has  so  lowered  the  theatre  in 
public  estimation  that  it  is  the  duty  of  the 
police  to  prevent  the  stage  from  meddling 
in  the  slightest  degree  with  religion.'  What 
has  killed  art  in  the  modern  world  is  com- 
mercialism. '  The  rulership  of  public  taste 
in  art,'  says  Wagner  in  '  Opera  and  Drama,' 
'has  passed  over  to  the  person  .  .  .  who 
orders  the  art-work  for  his  money,  and 
insists  on  ever  novel  variations  of  his  one 
beloved  theme,  but  at  no  price  a  new  theme 
itself ;  and  this  ruler  and  order-giver  is  the 
Philistine.'  '  I  simply  take  in  view,'  he  says 
in  1878,  in  his  article  on  'The  Public  and 
Popularity,'  'our  public  art-conditions  of 
the  day  when  I  assert  that  it  is  impossible 
for  anything  to  be  truly  good  if  it  is  to  be 
reckoned  in  advance  for  presentation  to  the 


278       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

public,  and  if  this  intended  presentation 
rules  the  author  in  his  sketch  and  composi- 
tion of  an  art-work.'  Thus  the  playwright 
has  to  endure  *  the  sufferings  of  all  the  other 
artists  turned  into  one/  because  what  he 
creates  can  only  become  a  work  of  art  by 
'entering  into  open  life,'  that  is,  by  being 
seen  on  the  open  stage.  '  If  the  theatre  is 
at  all  to  answer  to  its  high  and  natural 
mission  it  must  be  completely  freed  from  the 
necessity  of  industrial  speculation.'  For 
the  playwright,  therefore,  a  public  is  a 
necessary  part  of  his  stock-in-trade.  The 
Greeks  had  it,  supremely;  Shakespeare, 
Moliere,  had  it ;  but,  though  Wagner  him- 
self has  violently  conquered  it  for  music,  for 
drama  it  still  remains  unconquered. 

Wagner  points  out  the  significant  fact  that 
from  .^schylus  to  Moliere,  through  Lope  de 
Vega  and  Shakespeare,  the  great  dramatic 
poet  has  always  been  himself  an  actor,  or  has 
written  for  a  given  company  of  actors.  He 
points  out  how  in  Paris,  where  alone  the 
stage  has  a  measure  of  natural  life,  every 
genre  has  its  theatre,  and  every  play  is 
written  for  a  definite  theatre.  Here,  then, 
is  the  very  foundation  of  the  dramatic  art, 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER         279 

which  is  only  realised  by  the  complete  inter- 
dependence of  poet  and  actor,  the  poet 
'forgetting  himself  as  he  creates  his  poetry 
in  terms  of  living  men  and  women,  and  the 
actor  divesting  himself  of  self  in  carrying 
out  the  intentions  of  the  poet.  Wagner 
defines  the  Shakespearian  drama  as  '  a  fixed 
mimetic  improvisation  of  the  highest  poetic 
value,'  and  he  shows  how,  in  order  to  rise  to 
drama,  poetry  must  stoop  to  the  stage ;  it 
must  cease  to  be  an  absolute  thing,  pure 
poetry,  and  must  accept  aid  from  life  itself, 
from  the  actor  who  realises  it  according  to 
its  intention.  The  form  of  a  Shakespeare 
play  would  be  as  unintelligible  to  us  as  that 
of  a  Greek  play  without  our  knowledge  of 
the  stage  necessities  which  shaped  both  the 
one  and  the  other.  Neither,  though  both 
contain  poetry  which  is  supreme  as  poetry, 
took  its  form  from  poetry  ;  neither  is  intelli- 
gible as  poetic  form.  The  actor's  art  is  like 
'  the  life-dew  in  which  the  poetic  aim  was  to 
be  steeped,  to  enable  it,  as  in  a  magic  trans- 
formation, to  appear  as  the  mirror  of  life.' 

In  the  Greek  play  the  chorus  appeared  in 
the  orchestra,  that  is,  in  the  midst  of  the 
audience,  while  the  personages,  masked  and 


280       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

heightened,  were  seen  in  a  ghostly  illusion  of 
grandeur  on  the  stage.  Shakespeare's  stage 
is  planted  within  the  orchestra  ;  his  actors, 
who  acted  in  the  midst  of  the  audience,  had 
to  be  absolutely  natural  if  they  were  not 
to  be  wholly  ridiculous.  We  expect,  since 
his  time,  no  less  of  nature  from  the  actor,  a 
power  of  illusion  which  must  be  absolute. 

Man  interprets  or  is  the  ape  of  nature ; 
the  actor  is  the  ape  of,  and  interprets  man. 
He  is  '  Nature's  intermediate  link  through 
which  that  absolutely  realistic  mother  of  all 
being  incites  the  ideal  within  us.'  And  now 
Wagner  takes  his  further  step  from  drama 
into  music,  which  he  justifies,  in  one  place, 
by  representing  the  mirrored  image  of  life, 
which  is  the  play,  '  dipped  in  the  magic 
spring  of  music,  which  frees  it  from  all  the 
realism  of  matter,'  and,  in  another  place,  by 
the  aflSrmation  :  '  What  to  Shakespeare  was 
practically  impossible,  namely,  to  be  the 
actor  of  all  his  parts,  the  tone-composer 
achieves  with  complete  certainty,  for  out  of 
each  executant  musician  he  speaks  to  us 
directly.'  Into  these  speculations  we  must 
not  now  follow  him.  One  point,  however, 
which  he  raises  in  a  later  footnote  to  '  The 


THE  IDEAS   OF   WAGNER        281 

Art- work  of  the  Future '  has  a  significance, 
apart  from  his  special  intention,  in  its  choice 
of  music  as  a  test  or  touchstone  of  drama. 
He  imagines  the  playwright  resenting  the 
intrusion  of  music,  and  he  asks  him  in 
return  of  what  value  can  be  '  those  thoughts 
and  situations  to  which  the  lightest  and 
most  restrained  accompaniment  of  music 
should  seem  importunate  and  burdensome '  ? 
Could  there  be  a  more  essential  test  of 
drama,  or  a  test  more  easily  applied  by  a 
moment's  thought  ?  Think  of  any  given 
play,  and  imagine  a  musical  accompaniment 
of  the  closest  or  loosest  kind.  I  can  hear  a 
music  as  of  Mozart  coming  up  like  an 
atmosphere  about  Congreve's  '  Way  of  the 
World,'  as  easily  as  I  can  hear  Beethoven's 
'  Coriolan '  overture  leading  in  Shakespeare's 
'  Coriolanus.'  Tolstoi's  '  Power  of  Darkness ' 
is  itself  already  a  kind  of  awful  tragic 
music  ;  but  would  all  of  Ibsen  go  quite  well 
to  a  musical  setting  ?  Conceive  of  music 
and  Dumas  fils  together,  and  remember 
that,  rightly  or  wrongly,  Maeterlinck's 
'  Pelleas  et  Melisande '  has  only  succeeded 
on  the  stage  since  it  has  been  completed  by 
the  musical  interpretation  of  Debussy. 


282       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

The  root  of  all  evil  in  modern  art,  and 
especially  in  the  art  of  drama,  Wagner  finds 
to  be  the  fact  that  '  modern  art  is  a  mere 
product  of  culture,  and  not  sprung  from  life 
itself.'  The  drama  written  as  literature,  at 
a  distance  from  the  theatre,  and  with  only 
a  vague  consciousness  of  the  actor,  can  be  no 
other  than  a  lifeless  thing,  not  answering  to 
any  need.  The  only  modern  German  dramatic 
work  in  which  there  is  any  vitality,  Goethe's 
*  Faust,'  springs  from  the  puppet-stage  of 
the  people ;  but  German  actors  are  incap- 
able of  giving  it,  for  the  verse  must  be 
spoken  with  absolute  naturalness,  and  the 
actor  has  lost  the  secret  of  speaking  verse 
naturally.  Thus  the  actor  must  be  trained  ; 
must  be  taught  above  all  to  speak.  '  Only 
actors  can  teach  each  other  to  speak ;  and 
they  would  find  their  best  help  in  sternly 
refusing  to  play  bad  pieces,  that  is,  pieces 
which  hinder  them  from  entering  that 
ecstasy  which  alone  can  ennoble  their  art.' 
Wagner  is  never  tired  of  proclaiming  his 
debt  to  Wilhelmine  Schroder-Devrient,  who 
first  inspired  in  him,  he  tells  us,  the  desire 
to  write  music  worthy  of  her  singing.  Was 
her  voice   so    wonderful  ?      *  No,'    answers 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        283 

Wagner ;  '  she  had  no  "  voice  "  at  all ;  but 
she  knew  how  to  use  her  breath  so  beauti- 
fully, and  to  let  a  true  womanly  soul  stream 
forth  in  such  wonderful  sounds,  that  we 
never  thought  of  either  voice  or  singing. 
.  .  .  All  my  knowledge  of  mimetic  art,'  he 
goes  on  to  say,  '  I  owe  to  this  great  woman ; 
and  through  that  teaching  I  can  point  to 
truthfulness  as  the  foundation  of  that 
art.' 

Wagner's  best  service  to  drama,  in  his 
theories  as  in  his  practice,  is  the  insistence 
with  which  he  has  demonstrated  the  neces- 
sary basis  of  the  play  in  the  theatre.  '  The 
thorough  "  stage -piece," '  he  says,  *  in  the 
modernest  of  senses,  would  assuredly  have 
to  form  the  basis,  and  the  only  sound  one, 
of  all  future  dramatic  efforts.'  And  not 
merely  does  he  see  that  the  play  must  be 
based  upon  the  theatre,  but  that  the  particu- 
lar play  must  be  conditioned  by  the  particular 
theatre.  No  one  has  seen  more  clearly  the 
necessity  of  '  tempering  the  artistic  ends  to 
be  realised '  to  the  actual '  means  of  execu- 
tion' which  are  at  the  artist's  disposal. 
'  Even  the  scantiest  means  are  equal  to 
realising  an  artistic  aim,  provided  it  rules 


284       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

itself  for  expression  through  these  means* 
Thus  there  is  not  one  among  his  many  plans 
of  theatre  reform  which  has  not  some  actual 
building  in  view,  whether  the  Vienna  Opera- 
house  there  visibly  before  him,  or  that 
'  Blihnenfestspielhaus  '  which  he  saw  no  less 
clearly  in  his  mind  before  the  first  stone  of 
the  foundation  had  been  set  in  the  earth  at 
Bayreuth.  And  whenever  he  speaks  of  the 
theatre  it  is  as  of  a  kind  of  religious  service 
and  with  a  kind  of  religious  awe,  which,  in 
one  of  his  essays,  bursts  out  into  a  flame  of 
warning  exultation.  '  If  we  enter  a  theatre,' 
he  says  gravely,  '  with  any  power  of  in- 
sight, we  look  straight  into  a  daemonic  abyss 
of  possibilities,  the  lowest  as  well  as  the 
highest.  .  .  .  Here  in  the  theatre  the  whole 
man,  with  his  lowest  and  his  highest 
passions,  is  placed  in  terrifying  nakedness 
before  himself,  and  by  himself  is  driven  to 
quivering  joy,  to  surging  sorrow,  to  hell  and 
heaven.  ...  In  awe  and  shuddering  have 
the  greatest  poets  of  all  nations  and  of  all 
times  approached  this  terrible  abyss,'  from 
whose  brink  those  heavenly  wizards  are 
thrust  back  by  the  modern  world,  that 
they  may  give  place  to  *  the  Furies  of  vul- 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        285 

garity,  the  sottish  gnomes  of  dishonouring 
delights.' 


It  has  sometimes  been  said  that  there  is  a 
contradiction  between  Wagner's  conception 
of  music  at  various  periods  of  his  life ;  and 
so  in  appearance  there  is,  but  only  in  appear- 
ance. The  reading  of  Schopenhauer,  at 
Zurich  and  Venice,  during  the  composition 
of  '  Tristan  und  Isolde,'  did  indeed  supply 
him  with  a  complete  theory,  or  what  may  be 
called  a  transcendental  philosophy,  of  music, 
which  he  later  on  transferred  to  his  book  on 
Beethoven,  developing  it  after  his  own 
fashion.  It  is  true  also  that,  in  the  more 
important  of  his  previous  writings,  as  in 
'  Opera  and  Drama,'  nothing  had  been  said 
of  any  such  transcendental  view  of  music, 
music  being  treated  indeed  almost  wholly 
in  regard  to  its  dependence  upon  words  and 
action.  But  it  must  be  remembered  that 
Wagner  was  concerned  only  with  a  par- 
ticular form  of  music,  with  dramatic  music, 
and  that  he  was  arguing  with  a  purpose, 
and  to  convince   people,   already  attentive 


286       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

enough  to  music  in  itself,  of  certain  new 
possibilities  in  its  union  with  drama. 

In  Wagner's  theoretical  writing  every- 
thing is  a  matter  of  focus ;  that  once 
established,  nothing  is  seen  except  in  re- 
lation to  it.  He  is  literally  unable  to  see 
things  in  unrelated  detail.  This  is  why 
he  is  so  impatient  with  'absolute'  music 
in  its  modern  developments,  and  with 
'absolute'  literature,  in  more  than  Ver- 
laine's  sense,  when  he  cries,  'Et  tout  le 
reste  est  Litterature ! '  That  is  why  he 
is  unable  to  consider  a  single  question, 
the  question  of  the  Jews,  of  a  Goethe 
institute,  of  musical  criticism,  without 
focussing  it  where  the  rays  of  thought 
will  best  converge  upon  it.  Every  idea 
comes  to  Wagner  from  circumstances.  A 
king  becomes  his  friend,  and  he  sets  him- 
self to  find  out  the  inner  and  primal 
meaning  of  kingship.  Long  before,  he  had 
guessed  at  the  idea  which  he  is  only  now 
able  to  develop  out  of  the  material  actually 
under  his  hand ;  and  it  is  thus  no  less 
with  all  his  studies  of  race,  religion, 
politics. 

So,  wholly  concentrated  upon  one  aspect 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        287 

of  music,  he  may  well  have  seemed  to  do 
somewhat  less  than  justice  to  music  itself; 
and  the  Beethoven  book  may  seem  like  the 
sudden,  odd,  theoretical  awakening  of  a 
musician  to  the  whole  greatness  of  his  own 
art.  It  is  therefore  instructive  to  turn  to 
one  of  those  newspaper  articles  which 
Wagner  wrote  when  he  was  in  Paris  in 
1840  and  1841  ;  and  there  we  shall  find, 
and  in  reference  to  Beethoven,  a  singularly 
clear  anticipation  of  almost  everything  that 
he  was  afterwards  to  say  on  the  inner  mean- 
ing of  music.  Why,  he  asks,  should  people 
'  take  the  useless  trouble  to  confound  the 
musical  with  the  poetic  tongue,'  seeing  that 
'  where  the  speech  of  man  stops  short,  there 
music's  reign  begins  ? '  Tone-painting,  he 
admits,  may  be  used  in  jest,  but,  in  purely 
instrumental  music,  in  no  other  sense, 
without  ceasing  to  be  humorous  and  becom- 
ing absurd.  Where,  he  asks,  in  the  Eroica 
Symphony,  is  'the  Bridge  of  Lodi,  where 
the  battle  of  Arcole,  where  the  victory 
under  the  Pyramids,  where  the  18th  Bru- 
maire  ? '  These  things  would  have  been 
found  set  down  in  a  '  biographic  sym- 
phony '  of  his  time,  as  indeed  we  find  them 


288       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

in  biographic  or  autobiographic  tone-poems 
of  Kichard  Strauss  in  our  time.  But  Beet- 
hoven saw  Bonaparte,  not  as  a  general, 
but  as  a  musician ;  '  and  in  his  domain  he 
saw  the  sphere  where  he  could  bring  to 
pass  the  self-same  thing  as  Bonaparte  in 
the  plains  of  Italy.'  A  mood  in  music, 
he  admits,  may  be  produced  by  no  matter 
what  external  cause,  for  the  musician  is, 
after  all,  a  man,  and  at  the  mercy  of  his 
temperament  in  its  instinctive  choice  among 
the  sounds  in  which  he  hears  the  footsteps 
of  events.  But  these  moods,  once  pro- 
foundly set  in  motion,  '  when  they  force 
him  to  production,  have  already  turned 
to  music  in  him,  so  that,  at  the  moment 
of  creative  inspiration,  it  is  no  longer  the 
outer  event  that  governs  the  composer,  but 
the  musical  sensation  which  it  has  begotten 
in  him.'  And,  further,  what  music  can 
express  in  her  universal  voice  is  not  merely 
the  joy,  passion,  or  despair  of  the  individual, 
but  joy  itself,  or  passion  or  despair,  raised  to 
infinity,  and  purified  by  the  very  '  semblance 
of  the  world.' ^ 

1  Note   also   that   in  1857,  in  his  letter  on  Liszt's  Sym- 
phonic Poems,  Wagner  says :  '  Hear  my  creed  :    music  can 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        289 

Do  we  not  already  see  music,  as  Schopen- 
hauer saw  it,  as  '  an  idea  of  the  world '  ?  and 
the  musician  *  speaking  the  highest  wisdom 
in  a  language  his  reason  does  not  under- 
stand '  ?  It  is  in  the  wonderful  book  on 
Beethoven,  written  in  1870,  that  Wagner 
goes  deepest  into  music  as  music,  led  by 
Schopenhauer,  but  going  beyond  him.  He 
shows  us  Beethoven,  surrounded  by  silence, 
like  '  a  world  walking  among  men ' ;  and  he 
shows  us  how  the  action  of  music  is  to  shut 
us  off  from  the  outer  world,  where  we  can 
dream,  as  it  were,  awake,  redeemed  from  the 
strivings  of  the  individual  will,  and  at  one 
with  nature,  with  our  inmost  selves.  Music, 
he  shows  us,  blots  out  civilisation  as  the  day- 
light blots  out  lamplight. 

To  this  voice  of  nature  in  sound  it  seemed 
to  Wagner  that  Beethoven  had  given  as 
complete  an  interpretation  as  the  human 
individual  could  give.  What,  then,  he  asks, 
remains  for  instrumental  music  to  do  ?  If 
one  refuses   the    help  of   what    Beethoven 

never  and  in  no  possible  alliance  cease  to  be  the  highest, 
the  redeeming  art.  It  is  of  her  nature  that  what  all  the 
other  arts  but,  hint  at,  through  her  and  in  her  becomes  the 
most  indubitable  of  certainties,  the  most  direct  and  definite 
of  truths.' 

T 


290       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

finally  came  to  accept,  words,  and  if  one 
refuses  to  make  a  servile  copy  of  Beethoven, 
there  remains  only  that  riddle  without  an 
answer,  the  tone-poem,  and  that  riddle 
whose  answer  has  already  been  given,  pro- 
gramme music.  We  have  already  seen, 
from  '  Opera  and  Drama,'  what  Wagner 
thought  of  the  form  of  programme  music, 
as  Berlioz  employed  it.  In  a  later  article 
on  Liszt,  he  points  out  in  more  precise 
detail  how  Berlioz,  by  his  method,  only 
succeeded  in  losing  the  musical  idea  with- 
out finding  a  poetic  one,  music  being 
capable  of  giving  only  '  the  quintessence 
of  an  emotional  content,'  and  Berlioz  trying 
to  force  music  to  suggest,  without  words  or 
action,  definite  scenes  in  a  play.  In  Liszt, 
however,  he  found  a  more  genuinely  musical 
conception,  an  attempt,  whether  wholly  suc- 
cessful or  not,  to  translate  the  fundamental 
intention  of  a  poem  or  of  a  poet  into  terms 
of  music ;  and  this  seemed  to  him  to  be 
realised  in  the  Dante  Symphony,  where 
'  the  soul  of  Dante's  poem  is  shown  in 
purest  radiance.'  The  danger  of  this  new 
form  he  sees  to  be  that  of  attempting  to  do 
the  work  of  drama  without  the  visible  or 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        291 

audible  accompaniments  of  drama,  and,  in 
particular,  to  use,  for  mere  effect,  and  effect 
never  really  explicit,  modulations  which  in 
his  own  music  he  had  used  for  definite  and 
obvious  reasons.  He  counsels  the  composer 
never  to  quit  a  key  so  long  as  what  he  has 
to  say  can  be  said  in  it ;  and  he  shows  by 
his  own  practice  how  carefully  he  has  observed 
his  rule. 

Nothing  is  more  interesting  in  Wagner's 
comments  on  himself  than  the  account,  in 
*  A  Communication  to  my  Friends/  of  his 
early  struggle  after  originality  in  melody ; 
his  failure  to  achieve  originality  by  seeking  it ; 
and  how  the  quality  he  sought  came  to  him 
when  he  had  given  up  every  thought  but 
that  of  expressing  his  meaning,  the  meaning 
of  the  words  or  the  situation  which  he  wanted 
to  express.  '  I  no  longer,'  he  says,  '  tried 
intentionally  for  customary  melody,  or,  in  a 
sense,  for  melody  at  all,  but  absolutely  let  it 
take  its  rise  from  the  emotional  utterance  of 
the  words  themselves.'  We  may  compare 
one  of  the  wisest  of  Coleridge's  jottings : 
'  Item,  that  dramatic  poetry  must  be  poetry 
hid  in  thought  and  passion,  not  thought  and 
passion   disguised  in  the  dress   of  poetry.' 


292       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

Wagner  and  Coleridge,  two  great  masters  of 
technique,  teach  us  equally  that  the  greatest 
art  can  be  produced  only  by  the  abandon- 
ment of  art  itself  to  that  primal  energy  which 
works  after  its  own  laws,  not  conscious  of 
anything  but  of  the  need  of  exquisitely 
truthful  speech. 

There  is  a  certain  part  of  Wagner's  writ- 
ing about  music  which  is  fiercely  polemical, 
not  only  in  such  broad  attacks  as  the  famous 
*  Judaism  in  Music,'  but  in  regard  to  indi- 
vidual composers.  Except  when  he  jeers  at 
'  S.  Johannes '  Brahms,  with  what  seems  a 
literally  personal  irritation,  there  is  hardly 
an  instance  in  which  the  personal  element  is 
not  scrupulously  subordinated  to  a  concep- 
tion of  right  and  wrong  in  music.  The 
musicians  whom  he  attacks  are  always  and 
only  those  who  were  charlatans,  like  Meyer- 
beer ('  the  starling  who  follows  the  plough- 
share down  the  field,  and  merrily  picks  up  the 
earth-worm  just  uncovered  in  the  furrow '), 
or  triflers,  like  '  sickly '  Gounod,  or  those 
who  turned  back  on  their  earlier  selves,  like 
the  '  turgid '  later  Schumann,  or  were 
superficial  and  did  harm  to  art  by  their 
superficiality,  like  Mendelssohn  :  *  I  fancied 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        293 

I  was  peering  into  a  veritable  abyss  of  super- 
ficiality, an  utter  void.' 

He  is  scrupulously  just  to  a  musician  like 
Rossini,  who,  being  merely  heedless  and  sel- 
fish, let  his  genius  drift  with  the  tide ;  ^  he 
sees  the  sincerity  and  right  direction  of  an 
incomplete  talent  like  Spontini's ;  picks  out 
of  the  great  rubbish-heap  of  lighter  French 
operas  one  work  in  which  there  is  something, 
if  not  good,  vital,  Auber's  '  Masaniello ' ;  and, 
in  spite  of  personal  differences  and  personal 
affections,  can  be  scrupulously  accurate  in 
his  analysis  of  the  contradictory  genius  of 
Berlioz  and  in  his  characterisation  of  the 
misunderstood  genius  of  Liszt.  But  he 
was  incapable  of  seeing  an  abuse  without 
trying  to  set  it  right,  or  a  sham  without 
trying  to  stamp  it  out.  In  writing  a  letter 
of  advice  to  the  editor  of  a  new  musical 
journal,  he  bids  him  above  all  wage  war 
against  that  null  and  void  music  which  is 
made  as  a  separate  manufacture,  music  which 
follows  the  rules  and  has  no  other  reason  for 

1  One  of  Wagner's  subtlest  and  most  fundamental 
pages  of  criticism  is  contained  in  a  '  Reminiscence  of  Rossini,' 
written  in  1868,  in  which  he  shows  that  Rossini  as  truly 
represents  his  own  trivial  age  as  Palestrina,  Bach,  Mozart, 
represented  each  his  own  age  '  of  more  hopeful  effort.' 


294       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

existence.  He  hates  it  as  he  hates  that 
'  whole  clinking,  twinkling,  glittering, 
glistening  show,  Grand  Opera ! '  As  you 
must  knock  down  one  structure  if  you  would 
build  another  in  its  place,  no  detail  is  too 
minute  for  Wagner  to  define  and  denounce 
in  the  art-traffic  of  the  modern  world,  and 
he  has  not  only  said  finally,  and  said  fruit- 
fully, everything  that  is  to  be  said  in  criticism 
of  opera  and  opera-houses,  and  the  perform- 
ing and  staging  of  opera,  but  he  has  done  a 
special  and  often  overlooked  service  to  music 
in  general  by  his  insistence  on  the  proper 
rendering  of  orchestral  music.  It  is  to 
Wagner  that  we  owe  almost  a  revolution  in 
the  art  of  conducting. 

In  his  scheme  for  a  music-school  for 
Munich  (1865),  Wagner  laments  that  in 
Germany  '  we  have  classical  works,  but  as 
yet  no  classical  rendering  for  them,'  and  he 
shows  how,  through  the  lack  of  a  national 
Conservatoire,  there  is  no  musical  tradition 
in  Germany,  such  a  tradition,  for  instance, 
for  the  performance  of  Mozart  as  the  Paris 
Conservatoire  has  preserved  for  the  perfor- 
mance of  Gluck.  In  regard  to  Beethoven, 
the  condition  of  things  is  still  worse,  for  '  it  is 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        295 

an  established  fact  that  Beethoven  himself 
could  never  obtain  an  entirely  adequate  per- 
formance of  his  difficult  instrumental  works.' 
Here,  again,  he  points  out  how  the  Paris 
Conservatoire  spent  three  years  in  studying 
the  Ninth  Symphony,  and  how  needful  such 
study  was,  seeing  that,  in  so  many  cases, 
*  the  master's  thought  is  only  to  be  brought 
to  really  cognisable  utterance  through  a 
most  intelligent,  refined,  and  dexterous 
combination  and  modification  of  its  orches- 
tral expression.'  In  the  very  important 
essay  of  1870,  *  On  Conducting,'  and  in 
separate  studies  in  the  rendering  of  the 
Ninth  Symphony,  he  explains  in  detail  what 
these  '  quite  new  demands  on  rendering '  are 
which  '  arrive  with  Beethoven's  uncommonly 
expressive  use  of  rhythm,'  with  his  minute 
orchestral  shading,  and  also  with  those 
practical  errors  in  scoring  which  he  over- 
looked because  he  could  not  hear  them.  He 
shows  how  not  only  Beethoven,  but  Weber 
(and  in  Dresden,  where  Weber  had  con- 
ducted) had  come  to  be  given  in  wholly 
wrong  tempo ;  how  Gluck  and  Mozart  had 
been  misinterpreted  by  being  taken  twice 
too  fast  or  twice  too  slow.     Then  in  still 


296       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

greater  detail,  he  explains  (writing  from 
exile,  where  he  was  unable  to  come  into 
personal  contact  with  musicians)  how  his 
own  overtures  are  to  be  given,  and  the 
reason  of  every  shade  of  expression.  Few 
parts  of  his  writing  on  music  are  more  valu- 
able than  these  technical  instructions ;  and 
it  must  be  remembered  that  from  Warner 
arose  the  whole  modern  German  school  of  con- 
ductors, from  Billow  to  Weingartner,  and  that 
the  greatest  of  them,  Richter,  was  the  most 
intimately  under  his  influence.  Thus  Wag- 
ner not  only  reformed  the  actual  conditions 
of  music,  not  only  created  a  new  and  wonder- 
ful music  of  his  own,  but  brought  about  a 
scarcely  less  significant  reform  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  music,  which,  existing  on  paper, 
could  be  heard  nowhere  according  to  the 
intentions  of  the  composer. 


VI 

More  than  any  artist  of  our  time,  Wagner 
may  be  compared  with  the  many-sided 
artists  of  the  Renaissance ;  but  he  must  be 
compared  only  to  be  contrasted.  In  them 
an  infinity  of  talents  led  to  no  concentration 


THE  IDEAS  OF  WAGNER        297 

of  all  in  one ;  each  talent,  even  in  Leonardo, 
pulls  a  different  way,  and  painting,  science, 
literature,  engineering,  the  many  interpreta- 
tions and  mouldings  of  nature,  are  nowhere 
brought  together  into  any  unity,  or  built  up 
into  any  single  structure.  In  Wagner,  the 
musician,  the  poet,  the  playwright,  the 
thinker,  the  administrator,  all  worked  to  a 
single  end,  built  up  a  single  structure  ;  there 
was  no  waste  of  a  faculty,  nor  was  any  one 
faculty  sacrificed  to  another.  In  this  he  is 
unique  as  a  man  of  genius,  and  in  this  his  crea- 
tion has  its  justification  in  nature.  Whether 
or  no  the  '  art- work  of  the  future '  is  to  be  on 
the  lines  which  Wagner  laid  down  ;  whether 
Beethoven  may  not  satisfy  the  musical  sense 
more  completely  on  one  side,  and  Shake- 
speare the  dramatic  sense  on  the  other ; 
whether,  in  any  case,  more  has  been  demon- 
strated than  that  in  Germany,  the  soil  of 
music  and  the  only  soil  in  which  drama  has 
never  taken  root,  music  is  required  to  give 
dramatic  poetry  life  :  all  this  matters  Httle. 
A  man  with  a  genius  for  many  arts  has 
brought  those  arts,  in  his  own  work,  more 
intimately  into  union  than  they  have  ever 
before  been  brought ;  and  he  has  delighted 


298       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

the  world  with  this  combination  of  arts  as 
few  men  of  special  genius  have  ever  delighted 
the  world  with  their  work  in  any  of  these 
arts.  To  find  a  parallel  for  this  achievement 
we  must  look  back  to  the  Greeks,  to  the  age 
of  ^schylus  and  Sophocles ;  and  we  shall 
not  even  here  find  a  parallel ;  for,  if  the 
dramatic  poetry  was  on  a  vastly  higher 
plane  than  in  the  music-drama  of  Wagner, 
it  is  certain  that  the  music  was  on 
a  vastly  lower  one.  Of  the  future  it  is 
idle  to  speak ;  but,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
twentieth  century,  may  we  not  admit  that 
the  typical  art  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
the  art  for  which  it  is  most  likely  to  be 
remembered,  has  been  the  art,  musical  and 
dramatic,  of  Richard  Wagner  ? 

1905. 


THE  PEOBLEM   OF 
RICHARD    STRAUSS 


THE  PROBLEM  OF 
RICHARD  STRAUSS 

'  Je  ne  puis  trop  admirer  un  homme  qui  trouve  ^  une 
symphonic  le  d^faut  d'etre  trop  Cart6sienne,  et  a  une 
autre  de  pencher  vers  le  systeme  de  Spinosa.' 

Alfred  de  Vigny. 


In  that  essay  on  '  The  School  of  Giorgione/ 
in  which  Walter  Pater  came  perhaps  nearer 
to  a  complete  or  final  disentangling  of  the 
meanings  and  functions  of  the  arts  than  any 
writer  on  aesthetics  has  yet  done,  we  are 
told  :  '  All  art  constantly  aspires  towards  the 
condition  of  music'  And  of  music  because, 
'  in  its  ideal,  consummate  moments,  the  end 
is  not  distinct  from  the  means,  the  form 
from  the  matter,  the  subject  from  the 
expression ;  and  to  it,  therefore,  to  the  con- 
dition of  its  perfect  moments,  all  the  arts 
may  be  supposed  constantly  to  tend  and 
aspire.' 

Now  the  aim  of  modem  music,  which  may 

SOI 


302       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

seem  to  be  carried  to  at  least  its  furthest 
logical  development  in  the  music  of  Richard 
Strauss,  is  precisely  to  go  backwards  from 
this  point  towards  which  all  the  other  arts  had 
tended  and  aspired  in  vain,  and  to  take  up 
again  that  old  bondage  from  which  music 
only  had  completely  freed  itself.  *  For 
while  in  all  other  works  of  art,'  Pater  tells 
us,  '  it  is  possible  to  distinguish  the  matter 
from  the  form,  and  the  understanding  can 
always  make  this  distinction,  yet  it  is  the 
constant  effort  of  art  to  obliterate  it.'  With 
the  entrance  of  the  '  programme '  into  music, 
with  the  attempt  to  express  pure  idea,  with 
the  appeal  to  the  understanding  to  make 
distinctions,  music  has  at  once  forfeited  all 
the  more  important  of  its  advantages  over 
the  other  arts,  condescending  to  an  equality 
which  it  can  never  even  maintain  ;  putting 
itself,  in  fact,  at  a  wilful  disadvantage. 

Music  can  express  emotion  and  suggest 
sensation.  It  can  express  emotion  as  directly 
as  the  human  voice  can  express  emotion, 
by  an  intonation,  either  unaccompanied  by 
words,  as  in  a  shriek  or  sob,  or  irrespec- 
tive of  words,  as  in  a  phrase  which  says  one 
thing,  and  which  can  be  instantly  realised  to 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RICHARD  STRAUSS   303 

mean  another.  Music  can  suggest  sensation, 
either  by  a  direct  imitation  of  some  sound 
in  nature  (the  beating  of  the  heart,  the  sound 
of  the  wind,  the  rustUng  of  leaves)  or  by  a 
more  subtle  appeal  to  the  nerves,  like  the 
inexplicable  but  definite  appeal  of  a  colour 
in  the  sky,  which  seems  to  us  joyous,  or  of 
the  outline  of  a  passing  cloud,  which  seems 
to  us  threatening.  Music  can  call  up  mental 
states  of  a  more  profound,  because  of  a  more 
perfectly  disembodied,  ecstasy,  than  any 
other  art,  appealing,  as  it  does,  directly  to 
the  roots  of  emotion  and  sensation,  and  not 
indirectly,  through  any  medium  distinguish- 
able by  the  understanding.  But  music  can 
neither  express  nor  suggest  an  idea  apart 
from  emotion  or  sensation.  It  cannot  do  so, 
not  because  of  its  limitations,  but  because  of 
its  infinite  reach,  because  it  speaks  the 
language  of  a  world  which  has  not  yet  sub- 
divided itself  into  finite  ideas. 

'  Art,'  says  Pater,  in  the  essay  from  which 
I  have  quoted,  '  is  thus  always  striving  to  be 
independent  of  the  mere  intelligence,  to 
become  a  matter  of  pure  perception,  to  get 
rid  of  its  responsibilities  to  its  subject  or 
material.'     Art  has  little   to   do  with  the 


304       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

brain  apart  from  the  emotions ;  the  brain, 
apart  from  the  emotions,  produces  in  art 
only  the  fantastic  or  the  artificial.  When  a 
poet  puts  aside  poetry  to  give  us  philosophy 
(which  should  lie  like  dung  about  the  roots 
of  his  flower)  he  is  mistaking  the  supreme 
function  of  his  art  for  one  of  its  subordinate 
functions,  but  he  is  hardly  so  tatally  at  war 
with  the  nature  of  things  as  the  musician 
who  tries  to  give  us  abstract  thought  in 
music.  Ask  music  to  render  to  us  Spinoza's 
'  He  who  loves  God  does  not  desire  that  God 
should  love  him  in  return.'  There  we  get  an 
abstract  idea,  and  all  that  music  is  capable 
of  suggesting  to  as  in  it  is  the  emotion  of 
love,  which  can  be  suggested  in  the  noblest 
manner  without  conveying  to  us  any  distinc- 
tion between  a  sacred  human  love  and  the 
divine  love  of  God,  much  less  any  indication 
of  what  is  meant  by  the  conflict  in  magnan- 
imity between  these  two  loves. 

Now  Strauss  tries  to  give  us  abstract 
thought  in  music,  and  it  is  by  this  attempt 
to  convey  or  suggest  abstract  thought  that 
he  is  distinguished  from  other  composers  of 
'  programme '  music,  and  that  he  claims  our 
chief  attention  as  a  phenomenon  in  modern 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RICHARD  STRAUSS    305 

music.  He  has  gone  to  Nietzsche  for  the 
subject  of  one  of  his  '  tone-poems/  '  Also 
sprach  Zarathustra ' ;  to  Cervantes  for 
another,  '  Don  Quixote ' ;  another  is  called 
'  Tod  und  Verklarung '  (Death  and  Trans- 
figuration) ;  another,  '  Ein  Heldenleben  '  (A 
Hero's  Life),  and  in  this  he  offers  us  a  kind 
of  autobiography  or  Whitman-like  '  Song  of 
Myself  ;  finally  he  has  written  a  '  Symphonia 
Doraestica,'  in  which  the  clock  strikes  seven 
for  the  baby's  bed-hour,  and  the  baby's 
future  is  discussed  on  trombones  and 
trumpets.  His  admirers  having  said,  as 
they  continue  to  say,  that  he  had  written 
philosophical  music,  he  defined  his  intention 
in  these  words,  on  the  occasion  of  the  pro- 
duction of  'Also  sprach  Zarathustra'  at 
Berlin  in  1896  :  'I  did  not  intend  to  write 
philosophical  music  or  portray  Nietzsche's 
great  work  musically.  I  meant  to  convey 
musically  an  idea  of  the  development  of  the 
human  race  from  its  origin,  through  the 
various  phases  of  development,  religious  as 
well  as  scientific,  up  to  Nietzsche's  idea  of 
the  Uebermensch.' 

'  To  convey  an  idea ' :  there  we  get,  stated 
nakedly,    the    fundamental   fallacy   of    the 

u 


306       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

attempt.  Here,  then,  is  music  labelled 
'  nach  Nietzsche.'  For  the  name  of  Nietzsche 
substitute  the  name  of  Calvin  ;  say  that  you 
represent  the  babes,  a  span  long,  suffering  in 
hell,  and  the  just  made  perfect  in  heaven  : 
the  notes,  so  far  as  they  are  capable  of  con- 
veying a  definite  idea,  would  remain  as 
appropriate  to  the  one  as  to  the  other. 
Philosophy  or  theology,  it  is  all  one  ;  indeed, 
the  headlines  from  a  placard  of  the  Salva- 
tion Army  would  serve  as  well  as  either  for 
the  interpretation  of  a  '  tone-poem '  which 
no  one  would  any  longer  call  philosophical. 

In  his  anxiety  to  convey  more  precise 
facts  than  music  can  convey  by  itself, 
Strauss  often  gives  quotations,  quotations  in 
music,  which  are,  after  all,  only  one  degree 
rem^oved  from  headlines  or  programmes.  In 
the  fifth  section  of  '  Ein  Heldenleben  *  he 
quotes  themes  from  his  *  Macbeth,'  '  Don 
Juan,'  '  Tod  und  Verklarung,'  '  Till  Eulen- 
spiegel,'  '  Also  sprach  Zarathustra,'  '  Don 
Quixote,'  '  Guntram,'  and  the  song  '  Traum 
durch  die  Dammerung,'  in  order  to  suggest 
what  he  calls  '  the  Hero's  Works  of  Peace.' 
That  is  one  way  of  making  one's  meaning 
clear ;  it  has  a  good  precedent,  and  recalls 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RICHARD  STRAUSS   307 

the  French  drummer,  Monsieur  Le  Grand, 
in  Heine,  who  knew  only  a  little  German, 
but  could  make  himself  very  intelligible 
with  the  drum.  '  For  instance,  if  I  did  not 
know  what  the  word  liberie  meant,  he 
drummed  the  '  Marseillaise,'  and  I  under- 
stood him.  If  I  did  not  understand  the 
word  egalite,  he  drummed  the  march,  '  Qa 
ira  .  .  .  les  aristocrates  a  la  lanterne  I '  and 
I  understood  him.  If  I  did  not  know  what 
hetise  meant,  he  drummed  the  Dessauer 
March  .  .  .  and  I  understood  him.'  In 
'  Don  Juan,'  I  heard  unmistakable  echoes  of 
the  lire-music  in  '  Die  Walkiire,'  and  on 
turning  to  Lenau's  verses  I  find  that  the 
lire  of  life  is  supposed  to  have  died  out  on 
the  hearth.  The  famous  love-scene  in 
'  Feuersnot '  is  partly  made  from  a  very 
slightly  altered  version  of  the  '  Air  de 
Louis  XIII.,'  the  meaning  of  which,  as  a 
quotation,  I  am  unable  to  guess.  On  p.  86 
of  the  piano  score  of  the  opera,  at  the  words 
'  Da  treibt  Ihr  den  Wagner  aus  dem  Thor,' 
we  have  fragmentary  quotations  from  the 
'  Ring.'  In  the  opening  of  '  Also  sprach 
Zarathustra,'  Strauss  quotes  the  seven 
notes  to  which  the  priest  officiating  at  the 


308       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

mass  sings  the  'Credo  in  unuin  Deum.'  By 
the  quotation  of  this  easily,  though  not 
universally,  recognisable  phrase  he  is  able, 
it  is  true,  to  convey  something  approxi- 
mating to  an  idea;  but  it  is  conveyed, 
after  all,  by  association  of  ideas,  not 
directly,  and  is  dependent  on  something 
quite  apart  from  the  expressive  power  of 
music  itself 

Music  can  render  only  an  order  of  emotion, 
which  may  be  love  or  hate,  but  which  will 
certainly  not  be  mistaken  for  indifterence. 
Now  it  may  be  said,  and  justly,  that  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  philosophic  emotion,  the 
emotion  which  accompanies  the  philosopher's 
brooding;  over  ideas.  Take  the  overture  to 
'  Parsifal ' :  there  never  was  more  abstract 
music,  but  it  is,  as  I  have  defined  Coventry 
Patmore's  best  poetry,  abstract  ecstasy.  I 
do  not  say  that  this  abstract  ecstasy  might 
not  be  expressed  in  music  which  would  sum 
up  the  emotional  part  of  a  philosopher's 
conception  of  philosophy.  Call  it  Nietzsche, 
call  it  Richard  Strauss ;  I  shall  not  mind 
what  you  call  it  if  it  be  filled  with  some 
vital  energy  of  beauty,  if  it  live,  in  whatever 
region   of  the  clouds.     I    will   not   call   it 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RICHARD  STRAUSS  309 

philosophical  music,  but  I  will  admit  that 
the  order  of  emotion  which  it  renders  is  some 
order  of  abstract  emotion  which  may  as  well 
belong  to  the  philosopher  brooding  over  the 
destinies  of  ideas  as  to  the  lover  brooding 
over  the  religion  of  his  passionate  creed. 
Only,  I  must  be  sure  that  the  emotion  is 
there,  that  it  makes  and  fills  the  form 
through  which  it  speaks,  that  its  place  is  not 
taken  by  a  clever  imitation  of  its  outward 
and  unessential  part. 


n 

Thus  far  I  have  spoken  only  of  the  theory 
of  the  music.  But  the  music  itself,  it  may 
be  said,  if  only  the  music  is  good,  what  does 
all  this  matter  ?  If  the  music  were  unmis- 
takably good,  all  this  would  matter  nothing. 
It  is  precisely  because  the  music  does  not 
satisfy  or  convince  me  as  music,  that  I  set 
myself  to  the  task  of  finding  out  as  much  as 
I  can  of  the  reasons  why  it  does  not  satisfy 
or  convince  me.  When,  in  listening  to  a 
tone-poem  as  if  it  were  a  symphony,  I  find 
that  it  is  learned,  ingenious,  and  sensational, 
and  that  the  learning  does  not  seem  to  me  a 


310       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

means  (as  with  Bach)  but  an  end  in  itself, 
or  the  means  to  an  end  only  technically 
interesting,  and  that  the  sensationalism  does 
not  seem  to  me  a  vital  or  really  splendid 
emphasis  (as  in  Wagner)  but  an  emphasis 
not  explained  by  the  music  as  music ;  when 
I  find  many  voices  crying  out  of  all  the 
corners  of  the  orchestra,  and  seeming  to 
strive  after  an  articulate  speech  with  the 
anguish  of  dumb  things  tortured,  I  cannot 
but  ask  for  the  meaning  of  the  theories 
which  have  led  to  this  result.  Strauss  began 
by  writing  music  in  which  there  is  no  sugges- 
tion of  music  as  he  now  writes  it.  Call  it 
growth,  if  you  will,  deliberate  it  certainly 
was,  and  in  considering  Strauss's  music  his 
theories  certainly  matter,  because  they  have 
acted  directly  upon  his  musical  qualities, 
distracting  them,  setting  them  upon  im- 
possible tasks,  in  which  the  music  is 
deliberately  sacrificed  to  the  expression  of 
something  which  it  can  never  express. 
Strauss  is  what  the  French  call  un  cerebral, 
which  is  by  no  means  the  same  thing  as  a 
man  of  intellect.  Un  cerebral  is  a  man  who 
feels  through  his  brain,  in  whom  emotion 
transforms  itself  into  idea,  rather  than  in 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RICHARD  STRAUSS   311 

whom  idea  is  transfigured  by  emotion. 
Strauss  has  written  a  '  Don  Juan '  without 
sensuality,  and  it  is  in  his  lack  of  sensuality 
that  I  find  the  reason  of  his  appeal.  All 
modern  music  is  full  of  sensuality  since 
Wagner  first  set  the  fevers  of  the  flesh  to 
music.  In  the  music  of  Strauss  the  Germans 
have  discovered  the  fever  of  the  soul.  And 
that  is  indeed  what  Strauss  has  tried  to 
interpret.  He  has  gone  to  Nietzsche,  as  we 
have  seen,  for  the  subject  of  one  of  his 
symphonic  poems,  'Also  sprach  Zarathustra'; 
in  *  Tod  und  Verklarung '  we  find  him  scene- 
painting  the  soul ;  *  Don  Juan '  is  full  of 
reflections  concerning  the  soul;  even  in 
*  Macbeth '  it  is  *  Fate  and  metaphysical  aid ' 
which  are  what  concern  him  in  the  tragedy. 
He  is  desperately  in  earnest,  doctrinal 
almost,  made  uneasy  by  his  convictions. 
He  thinks  with  all  his  might,  and  he  sets 
his  thoughts  to  music.  But  does  he  think 
in  music,  and  what  does  his  thinking 
come  to  ? 

In  one  of  his  compositions,  a  '  melodrame ' 
for  the  piano,  intended  as  a  musical  accom- 
paniment to  the  words  of  Tennyson's  '  Enoch 
Arden,'  after  that  hopelessly  wrong  fashion 


312       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

which  Schumann  set  in  his  lovely  music  to 
'  Manfred,'  Strauss  has  shown,  significantly 
as  I  think,  the  spirit  in  which  he  approaches 
literature.  It  is  a  kind  of  running  commen- 
tary in  footnotes,  not  a  new  creation  in 
another  art.  The  music  tries  to  express 
something  which  is  not  in  itself  but  in  the 
words  of  the  text,  never  for  a  moment  trans- 
cending those  words,  carrying  them,  as  music 
can  carry  words,  into  new  regions.  The 
ingenuity  with  which  it  is  put  together  is 
like  the  ingenuity  which  a  detective  novelist 
expends  upon  his  plot.  The  motives  are 
woven  with  the  utmost  care  ;  they  return, 
cross,  are  combined,  broken,  exalted,  turn 
to  the  sob  of  waves  or  the  sound  of  wedding- 
bells  ;  they  add  italics  and  capitals  to  all 
the  points  of  the  story  ;  the  web  is  intricate 
and  every  mesh  holds  firm.  But  what  of 
the  material  itself?  It  is  pretty,  common, 
and  effective ;  it  has  everything  that  is 
obvious  in  sentiment  and  matter  of  fact  in 
expression.  The  notes  do  not  live,  each 
with  its  individual  life ;  they  have  been  set 
in  order  for  a  purpose,  as  an  accompaniment 
to  a  speaking  voice  and  to  the  words  of  a 
poem. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RICHARD  STRAUSS   313 

Strauss  has  no  fundamental  musical  ideas 
(ideas,  that  is,  which  are  great  as  music, 
apart  from  their  significance  to  the  under- 
standing, their  non-musical  significance)  and 
he  forces  the  intensity  of  his  expression 
because  of  this  lack  of  genuine  musical 
material.  If  you  intensify  nothing  to  the 
nth.  degree,  you  get,  after  all,  nothing ;  and 
Strauss  builds  with  water  and  bakes  bread 
with  dust.  '  Tod  und  Verklarung '  is  a  vast 
development  towards  something  which  does 
not  come ;  a  preparation  of  atmosphere,  in 
which  no  outline  can  be  distinguished  :  a 
stage  for  life,  if  you  will,  but  a  stage  on 
which  life  does  not  enter ;  the  creator  has 
not  been  able  to  put  breath  into  his  world. 
All  the  colours  of  the  orchestra,  used  as  a 
palette,  flood  one  with  their  own  fires  and 
waves ;  it  is  as  if  an  avalanche  of  water 
swept  over  one  ;  but  out  of  this  tossing  sea 
only  here  and  there  a  poor  little  shivering 
melody  puts  up  its  head  and  clings  halt- 
drowned  to  a  spar.  I  think  of  all  the 
painters  who  have  tried  to  paint  without 
drawing,  and  of  all  the  painters  who  have 
tried  to  draw  by  rule  and  measure,  and  I 
think  of  Blake's  warning :    '  He  who  does 


314       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

not  imagine  in  stronger  and  better  linea- 
mentSj  and  in  stronger  and  better  light, 
than  his  perishing  mortal  eye  can  see,  does 
not  imagine  at  all.  .  .  .  Leave  out  this  line 
(the  bounding  line,  Blake  calls  it,  the  hard 
and  wiry  line  of  rectitude  and  certainty)  and 
you  leave  out  life  itself;  all  is  chaos  again, 
and  the  line  of  the  Almighty  must  be  drawn 
out  upon  it  before  man  or  beast  can 
exist.' 

Strauss,  it  seems  to  me,  lacks  this  recti- 
tude and  certainty  of  the  bounding  line,  and 
that  is  why  his  music  washes  over  one  with- 
out colouring  one's  mind  with  its  own  dyes. 
It  is  not  that  he  has  not  a  certain  mechanical 
kind  of  draughtsmanship,  and  might  not  be 
said  to  draw  well  as  the  President  of  the 
Royal  Academy  might  be  said  to  draw  well. 
But  just  as  all  the  elaborate  and  lifeless 
drawing  of  *  The  Cave  of  the  Sea-Nymphs ' 
is  of  less  value  than  that  rough  scribble  of 
lines  by  which  Bodin  circumscribes  life  in 
one  of  those  rapid  pencil  drawings  done  to 
catch  some  movement  of  the  model,  so  the 
musical  science  of  Strauss,  elaborately, 
showily  able  though  it  is,  leaves  but  a  vague, 
because  but  a  lifeless  image  upon  the  mind. 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RICHARD  STRAUSS   315 

On  coming  back  after  listening  to  the  music 
of  Strauss,  one's  brain  is  silent,  one's  memory 
hears  nothing.  There  is  a  feeling  as  if  one 
had  passed  in  front  of  some  great  illumina- 
tion,as  if  one  had  feasted  on  colours,  and  wan- 
dered in  the  midst  of  clouds.  But  all  is 
over,  not  a  trace  remains ;  there  is  no  pulse 
ticking  anywhere  in  one's  body.  One  says 
calmly,  how  interesting,  how  curious,  this 
was ;  a  new  thing,  a  thing  one  must  judge 
fairly,  a  wonderful  thing  in  its  way  ;  but 
the  instant,  inevitable  thrill,  straight  to 
the  backbone,  the  new  voice,  which  one 
seems  to  recognise  when  one  hears  it  for  the 
first  time  :  where  are  these  ?  If  I  cared 
more  for  literature  than  for  music,  I  imagine 
that  I  might  care  greatly  for  Strauss.  He 
offers  me  sound  as  literature.  But  I  prefer 
to  read  my  literature,  and  to  hear  nothing 
but  music. 

Strauss  reminds  me,  at  one  time  of  De 
Quincey  or  Sydney  Dobell,  at  another  of 
Gustave  Moreau  or  of  Arnold  Bocklin,  and  I 
know  that  all  these  names  have  had  their 
hour  of  worship.  All  have  some  of  the 
qualities  which  go  to  the  making  of  great 
art ;  all,  in  different  ways,  fail  through  lack 


316       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

of  the  vital  quality  of  sincerity,  the  hard  and 
wiry  line  of  rectitude  and  certainty.  All 
are  rhetorical,  all  produce  their  effect  by  an 
effort  external  to  the  thing  itself  which  they 
are  saying  or  singing  or  painting. 

Strauss,  like  De  Quincey,  has  a  great 
mastery  over  sensation.  He  can  be  be- 
wildering, tormenting,  enervating,  he  is 
always  astonishing ;  there  is  electric  fluid  in 
his  work,  but  all  this  electric  fluid  scatters 
itself  by  the  way,  never  concentrates  itself 
to  the  vital  point.  He  gives  you  sensation, 
but  he  gives  it  to  you  coldly,  with  a  calcula- 
tion of  its  effect  upon  you.  He  gives  you 
colour  in  sound,  but  he  gives  you  colour  in 
great  blotches,  every  one  meant  to  dazzle 
you  from  a  separate  angle ;  so  that  it  is 
hardly  extravagant  to  say,  as  a  friend  of 
mine  said  to  me,  that  his  music  is  like, 
not  so  much  a  kaleidoscope,  as  a  broken 
kaleidoscope. 

in 

Strauss  has  many  moments  in  which  he 
reminds  me  of  Schumann,  and  not  only  the 
moments  in  which  he  tries  to  bring  humour 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RICHARD  STRAUSS   317 

into  music.  Turn  from  the  '  Annie '  motive 
in  '  Enoch  Arden '  to  the  '  Eusebius '  of 
the '  Carnival,'  and  you  will  readily  see  all 
the  difference  there  can  be  between  two 
passages  which  it  is  quite  possible  to  com- 
pare with  one  another.  The  '  Annie '  motive 
is  as  pretty  as  can  be,  it  is  adequate  enough 
as  a  sugfofestion  of  the  somewhat  colourless 
heroine  of  Tennyson's  poem  ;  but  how  lack- 
ing in  distinction  it  is,  if  you  but  set  it 
beside  the  '  Eusebius,'  in  which  music 
requires  nothing  but  music  to  be  its  own 
interpreter.  But  it  is  in  his  attempts  at 
the  grotesque  that  Schumann  seems  at  times 
actually  to  lead  the  way  to  Strauss.  It  is 
from  Schumann  that  Strauss  has  learnt 
some  of  those  hobbling  rhythms,  those 
abrupt  starts,  as  of  a  terrified  peasant,  by 
which  he  has  sometimes  suggested  his  par- 
ticular kind  of  humour  in  music. 

'  Till  Eulenspiegel's  Merry  Pranks '  is 
meant  to  be  a  musical  joke,  and  it  is  like 
nothing  so  much  as  a  Toy  Symphony,  in 
which  the  toys  are  imitated  by  the  instru- 
ments of  a  full  orchestra.  This  kind  of 
realism,  far  from  being  a  new  development 
in  music,  was  one  of  the  earliest  games  of 


318       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

the  art  in  its  childhood.  There  never  was  a 
time  when  music  did  not  say  '  Co-co-ri-co ' 
and  '  Cuckoo.'  After  Haydn,  the  joke  began 
to  seem  outworn.  Berlioz  took  it  up  again, 
with  his  immense  seriousness,  and  brought 
terror  out  of  pleasantry,  and  sublimity  out 
of  ugliness.  Strauss  has  gone  back  to  the 
mechanical  making  of  humour.  A  descend- 
ing major  seventh  represents,  on  Strauss's 
own  authority,  '  Till  strung  up  to  the 
gibbet.'  When,  as  in  '  Feuersnot,'  Strauss 
writes  a  common  little  dance  tune,  and 
suggests  to  U8,  by  the  elaborate  way  in 
which  it  is  developed,  and  by  the  elabora- 
tion of  the  surrounding  music,  that  he 
means  it  for  a  realistic  representation  of 
the  bourgeois  as  he  is,  I  am  reminded  of  Mr. 
George  Gissing,  and  of  his  theory  that  the 
only  way  to  represent  commonplace  people 
in  art  is  to  write  about  them  in  a 
commonplace  way.  That  was  not  Wag- 
ner's way  of  working  in  '  Die  Meistersinger.' 
That  was  not  Balzac's  way  of  working  in 
'  Les  Pay  sans.'  In  much  of  '  Till  Eulen- 
spiegel'  the  orchestra  jokes  after  the 
approved  German  fashion,  chimera  bom- 
hinans  in  vacuo.      German    humour  is  un- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RICHARD  STRAUSS   319 

related  to  any  normal,  or,  indeed,  existing 
thing,  it  is  spun  out  of  the  brain  without 
the  help  of  the  senses.  *  Till '  mocks  with  a 
vast  inverted  seriousness.  But  it  is  without 
beauty,  and  the  grotesque  becomes  art  when 
beauty  comes  into  it.  Look  at  the  carvings 
in  a  Gothic  cathedral,  look  at  a  Japanese 
bronze  or  a  monster  in  a  Japanese  print. 
The  delicacy  which  you  will  find  there,  lurk- 
ing in  those  horrid  folds,  is  what  distinguishes 
great  work  from  common,  in  the  grotesque 
as  in  all  other  forms  of  art.  It  is  the  differ- 
ence between  Puck  and  the  gnome  painted 
on  the  walls  of  a  German  beer-cellar. 
Strauss  tricks  out  his  gnome  with  all  the 
colours  of  the  lime-lights,  but  the  gnome 
remains  a  mis-shapen  creature  out  of  the 
earth,  when  the  lights  are  over. 

Yet  how  amazingly  clever  the  thing  is, 
how  the  orchestra  unbends,  plays  pranks, 
turns  head  over  heels  for  the  occasion! 
Music  is  a  grave  thing  and  laughs  unwill- 
ingly. Strauss  compels  it  to  do  what  he 
wants,  and  it  does  what  he  wants,  with  the 
ferocity  of  a  caged  wild  beast  doing  tricks 
imder  the  whip  of  the  keeper. 

Listen  to  '  Don  Quixote,'  which  is  meant 


320       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

to  be  an  interpretation  of  Cervantes,  and 
which  is  like  nothing  so  much  as  what  one  of 
its  admirers  has  called  it,  not  knowing  that 
he  is  condemning  it  by  so  calling  it :  '  book- 
illustrations.'  It  is  a  series  of  'fantastic 
variations  on  a  knightly  theme,'  and  each  of 
the  variations  bears  a  title,  such  as  '  The 
knight  reading  romances  of  knight-errantry 
and  losing  his  reason,'  or  '  the  memorable 
journey  in  the  enchanted  boat.'  The 
'journey  through  the  air '  is  indicated  by  a 
species  of  churning-machine,  and  I  do  not 
know  why  detached  pizzicato  notes  on  the 
basses,  rather  than  '  real  water,'  should  be 
put  to  tell  us  that  the  enchanted  boat  has 
capsized,  and  that  the  travellers  come  to 
land  dripping.  Sheep  bleat  through  trem- 
olos on  the  muted  brass ;  very  like  sheep 
perhaps,  but  certainly  very  unlike  music. 
Throughout,  as  one  listens  to  music  which 
seems  to  have  been  literally  founded  on  the 
style  of  Herr  Beckmesser  in  the  '  Meister- 
singer,'  one  listens  for  some  meaning  outside 
the  notes,  one  listens  as  if  following  a  riddle, 
so  empty  of  meaning  are  the  notes  themselves. 
There  have  been  commentators  of  the  Bible 
and  of  Shakespeare  who  have  worried  their 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RICHARD  STRAUSS    321 

texts  in  much  the  same  manner  as  Strauss 
worries  the  text  of  '  Don  Quixote.'  Not  a 
word  escapes  him,  he  would  set  commas  to 
music  ;  but  so  wholly  is  he  blinded  to  the 
meaning  of  Cervantes  that  he  even  degrades 
Don  Quixote,  making  him  jaunty.  I  would 
call  it  a  piece  of  vast  delusion,  if  what  is  so 
petty  might  be  called,  with  ever  so  little 
intention  of  praising  it,  vast.  Here,  indeed, 
in  this  music,  but  in  wholly  another  sense 
than  the  very  literal  sense  in  which  it  was 
meant,  is  a  battle  with  sheep  and  with 
wind-mills ;  here  is  one  who  takes  every 
Dulcinea  for  a  country  wench,  and  Mam- 
brino's  helmet  for  any  barber's  basin.  In 
'  Don  Quixote  '  Strauss  has  been  crueller  to 
himself  than  anywhere  else  in  his  music. 

To  pass  from  '  Don  Quixote '  to  '  Also 
sprach  Zarathustra,'  and  from  that  to  '  Ein 
Heldenleben,'  is  to  come,  at  each  step,  nearer 
to  music,  in  spite  of  the  '  groanings  which 
cannot  be  uttered,'  in  the  one,  and  the 
kettle-drums  and  trumpets,  and  the  artillery 
charging,  and  the  shrieks  of  the  wounded, 
and  the  whole  smoke  and  carnage  of  a  literal 
battle,  in  the  other.  Nothing  so  unlike 
Nietzsche  was   ever   written   as  the   '  Also 

X 


322       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

spracli  Zarathustra' of  Strauss,  which  seems  to 
represent  the  endless  agonies  of  a  bad  dream. 
Beethoven's  Seventh  Symphony  might  speak 
in  music  something  of  the  proud  and  ex- 
ultant and  laughing  and  dancing  message  of 
Zarathustra  ;  not  this  straining  eftbrt  and 
unheroic  carrying  of  burdens.  But,  if  we 
forget  Nietzsche  and  the  programme,  and 
listen  to  the  music  as  music,  we  shall  find 
the  immense  technical  ability  of  Strauss 
more  genuinely  effective  than  usual ;  the 
imitation  of  the  real  thing  which  he  always 
does  with  such  impressive  cleverness,  more 
nearly  deceptive  than  usual.  The  '  Helden- 
leben,'  in  spite  of  the  mere  folly  of  the 
battle-field,  is  the  most  coherent  thing 
which  Strauss  has  yet  done,  and  its  son- 
orities, empty  though  they  are  of  all  fine 
ecstasy,  come  to  us  with  more  brilliant 
shocks,  a  more  sweeping  energy,  than  else- 
where. That  external  beauty,  that  beauty 
which  consists  in  a  new,  powerful,  astonish- 
ing way  of  saying  things,  though  it  can 
never  impose  itself  in  place  of  the  inner 
beauty  which  illuminates  all  things  because 
it  is  a  living  core  of  flame,  has  its  own  merit, 
which  must  be  admitted  in  its  own  way,  and 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RICHARD  STRAUSS   323 

Strauss  is  pre-eminent  in  our  time  as  a 
master  of  the  quality  which,  more  than  any 
other,  conquers  and  captivates  the  modern 
intelHgence. 

Strauss  is  the  only  decadent  in  music,  and 
he  has  tried  to  debauch  music,  as  Stuck  has 
tried  to  debauch  painting,  and  as  Klinger 
has  tried  to  debauch  sculpture,  for  the  satis- 
faction of  a  craving  v^hich  is  not  '  simple, 
sensuous,  and  passionate,'  but  elaborate, 
intellectual  and  frigid.  The  whole  tendency 
of  modern  German  art  is  summed  up  in  his 
tone-poems,  and  it  is  a  tendency  towards  an 
orgy  of  the  brain,  at  once  idealistic  and 
gross,  a  perversity  which  proceeds  from 
impotence,  and  culminates  in  that  emphasis 
which  is  worse  than  vice,  because  it  is  vulgar. 
Strauss  does  things  with  the  orchestra  which 
no  one  has  ever  done  before ;  he  delights 
you  with  his  effects  as  effects,  and  though  I 
am  complaining  of  this  very  fact,  I  wish  to 
credit  him  with  all  that  it  means,  for  good 
and  evil.  When  people  call  Strauss's  music 
ugly  they  are  mistaking  the  question  at 
issue.  Technique  carried  to  the  point  to 
which  Strauss  carries  it  has  a  certain  incon- 
testable value,  and  it  matters  little  whether 


324       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

it  is   employed   on   good   or   bad   material. 
There  is  such  a  thing  as  having  a  genius 
for   technique,   and  while   even   genius   for 
technique    never    produces    a     satisfactory 
result,  the  plain,  simple  result  of  greatness, 
it   produces   a   result   which   is  sufficiently 
interesting    to    detain    you     by    the    way. 
Strauss    calls    off  your    attention  from  the 
thing  itself  to  the  way  in  which  the  thing 
is  done ;  yes,  but  I  am  prepared  to  admire, 
with  all  due  reservation,  the  way  in  which  it 
is  done.    The  way  in  which  Strauss  writes  for 
the  orchestra  gives  me  a  separate  pleasure, 
just  as  the  way  in  which  Swinburne  writes 
verse,  quite  apart  from  what  either  has  to  say. 
Strauss  chooses  to  disconcert  the  ear  ;  I  am 
ready  to  be  disconcerted,  and  to  admire  the 
skill  with  which  he  disconcerts  me.     I  mind 
none   of   the   dissonances,    queer   intervals, 
sudden   changes ;  but   I  want  them  to  con- 
vince me  of  what  they  are  meant  to  say. 
The  talk  of  ugliness  is   a  mere  device  for 
drawing   one   aside  from   the   trail.      Vital 
sincerity  is  what  matters,  the  direct  energy 
of  life  itself,  forcing  the  music  to  be  its  own 
voice.     Do  we  find  that  in  this  astonishingly 
clever  music  ? 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RICHARD  STRAUSS   325 

I  do  not  find  it.  I  find  force  and  tenacity, 
a  determined  grip  on  his  material,  such  as  it 
is,  the  power  to  do  whatever  he  can  conceive. 
But  I  feel  that  that  constructive  power 
which  weaves  a  complex,  but  tightly  woven 
network  of  sound  is  at  its  best  but  logic 
without  life  ;  that  though  the  main  ideas  are 
expressed  with  admirable  force  and  coher- 
ence, they  are  not  great  ideas,  they  are 
exterior,  lifeless,  manufactured  ideas.  To 
say,  as  it  has  not  untruly  been  said,  that  the 
details  are  subservient  to  the  main  ideas,  is 
only  saying  that  all  these  wheels  within  wheels 
turn  one  another,  not  that  they  grind  corn 
for  bread.  In  subordinating  single  effects  to 
the  effect  of  the  whole  he  is  only,  after  all, 
showing  himself  a  great  master  of  effect. 
He  is  that,  as  De  Quincey  is  that,  with  the 
same  showy  splendour,  the  same  outer  shell 
of  greatness.  What  I  do  not  find  in  his 
work  is  great  material,  or  the  great  manner 
of  working ;  and  as  he  sets  himself  the 
biggest  tasks,  and  challenges  comparison 
with  the  greatest  masters,  he  cannot  be 
accepted,  as  much  smaller  men  have  been 
accepted,  for  what  they  have  done,  perfect 
within  its  limits. 


326       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

When  Strauss  takes  the  orchestra  in  both 
fists  and  sets  it  clanging,  I  do  not  feel  that 
sense  of  bigness  which  I  feel  in  any  outburst 
of  Beethoven  or  of  Wagner.  It  comes 
neither  from  a  great  height  nor  from  a  great 
depth.  There  is  always  underneath  it  some- 
thing either  vague  or  obvious.  When  an  un- 
expected voice  comes  stealthily  from  among 
the  wood- wind,  or  a  harp  t  ovists  through 
the  'cellos,  or  a  violin  cries  out  of  an  abyss 
of  sound,  it  never  '  makes  familiar  things  seem 
strange,  or  strange  things  seem  familiar.' 
It  is  all  fearfully  and  wonderfully  made, 
but  it  is  made  to  satisfy  a  desire  of 
making,  and  there  is  something  common 
in  the  very  effectiveness  of  the  effects.  All 
the  windy,  exalted  music  in  '  Feuersnot '  is 
the  same  kind  of  writing  as  the  florid  Italian 
writing,  the  music  of  '  Trovatore,'  mechanical 
exaltation,  crises  of  the  head,  much  more 
splendidly  developed,  from  an  even  tinier 
point  of  melodic  life.  All  this  working  up, 
as  of  a  very  calculated  madness,  may  go  to 
the  head,  from  which  it  came  ;  never  to  the 
heart,  to  which  it  was  always  a  stranger. 
When  I  play  it  over  on  the  piano,  I  get  the 
excitement  with  which,  if  I  were  a  mathema- 


THE  PROBLEM  OF  RICHARD  STRAUSS    327 

tician,  I  should  follow  the  most  complicated 
of  Euclid's  problems.  It  would  be  untrue 
to  say  that  I  do  not  get  from  it  a  very 
definite  pleaure.  But  it  is  a  dry  and  dusty 
pleasure,  it  speaks  to  what  is  most  superficial 
in  me,  to  my  admiration  of  brilliant  external 
things,  of  difficult  things  achieved,  of  things 
not  born  but  made.  It  comes  to  me  empty 
of  life,  and  it  touches  in  me  no  spring  of 
life. 

For  my  part,  I  know  only  one  really  reassur- 
ing test  of  the  value  of  a  work  of  art.  Here  is 
something  on  which  time  has  not  yet  set  its 
judgment :  place  it  beside  something,  as  like 
it  as  possible,  on  which  the  judgment  of 
time  seems  to  have  been  set,  and  see  if  it 
can  endure  the  comparison.  Let  it  be  as  un- 
like as  you  please,  and  the  test  will  still  hold 
good.  I  can  pass  from  an  overture  of  Wag- 
ner to  a  mazurka  of  Chopin,  as  easily  as  from 
a  scene  in  a  play  of  Shakespeare  to  a  song  of 
Herrick.  The  one  may  be  greater  than  the 
other,  but  the  one  is  not  more  genuine  than 
the  other.  But  listen  to  the  Fifth  Symphony 
of  Besthoven  after  listening  to  the  'Zara- 
thustra'  tone-poem  of  Strauss,  and  what  is 
the  result?    I  have  passed  at  once  out  of 


328       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

the  study,  in  which  a  scholar  drooped  over 
his  book,  and  wrought  at  lonely  enchant- 
ments ;  nothing  but  the  sky  is  over  me,  and 
I  hear  the  onslaught  of  an  army  of  sound 
upon  the  limits  of  time  and  against  the 
ramparts  of  the  world.  Or  turn  from  the 
opera  music  of  Strauss  to  the  opera  music  of 
Wagner,  and  what  is  the  result?  I  play 
twenty  pages  of  the  piano  score  of 'Feuersnot,' 
and  as  I  play  them  I  realise  the  immense 
ingenuity,  the  brilliant  cleverness,  of  the 
music,  all  its  effective  qualities,  its  qualities 
of  solid  construction,  its  particular  kind  of 
mastery.  Then  I  play  a  single  page  of 
'  Parsifal '  or  of  '  Tristan,'  and  I  am  no 
longer  in  the  same  world.  That  other  flash- 
ing structure  has  crumbled  into  dust,  as  if 
at  the  touch  of  an  Ithuriel's  spear.  Here  I 
am  at  home,  I  hear  remote  and  yet  familiar 
voices,  I  am  alive  in  the  midst  of  life.  I 
wonder  that  the  other  thing  could  have 
detained  me  for  a  moment,  could  have  come, 
for  a  moment,  so  near  to  deceiving  me. 

1902,  1905. 


ELEONOEA   DUSE 


ELEONORA  DUSE 


Eleonora  Duse  is  a  great  artist,  the  type 
of  the  artist,  and  it  is  only  by  accident  that 
she  is  an  actress.  Circumstances  having 
made  her  an  actress,  she  is  the  greatest  of 
living  actresses ;  she  would  have  been  equally 
great  in  any  other  art.  She  is  an  actress 
through  being  the  antithesis  of  the  actress ; 
not,  indeed,  by  mere  reliance  upon  nature, 
but  by  controlling  nature  into  the  forms  of 
her  desire,  as  the  sculptor  controls  the  clay 
under  his  fingers.  She  is  the  artist  of  her 
own  soul,  and  it  is  her  force  of  will,  her 
mastery  of  herself,  not  her  abandonment  to 
it,  which  make  her  what  she  is. 

A  great,  impersonal  force,  rushing  towards 
the  light,  looking  to  every  form  of  art  for 
help,  for  sustenance,  for  inspiration ;  a  soul 
which  lives  on  the  passionate  contemplation 

8S1 


332       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

of  beauty,  of  all  the  forms  of  beauty,  with- 
out preference  for  Monteverde  or  Eodin,  for 
Dante  or  Leonardo  ;  an  intelligence  alert  to 
arrest  every  wandering  idea  that  can  serve 
it ;  Duse  seems  to  live  in  every  nerve  and 
brain-cell  with  a  life  which  is  sleepless  and 
unslackening.  She  loves  art  so  devotedly 
that  she  hates  the  mockery  of  her  own  art, 
in  which  disdain  forces  her  to  be  faultless ; 
hating  the  stage,  wondering  why  some  one 
in  the  audience  does  not  rise  from  his  seat, 
and  leap  upon  the  stage,  and  cry,  *  Enough 
of  this  ! '  she  acts  half  mechanically,  with 
herself,  pulling  up  all  the  rags  of  her  own 
soul,  as  she  says,  and  flinging  them  in  the 
face  of  the  people,  in  a  contemptuous  rage. 
When  she  is  not  on  the  stage  she  forgets  the 
stage  ;  if,  in  the  street,  some  words  of  one 
of  her  parts  come  to  her  with  a  shiver,  it  is 
some  passage  of  poetry,  some  vivid  speech 
in  which  a  soul  speaks.  Why  she  acts  as 
she  does,  and  how  she  succeeds  in  being  so 
great  an  artist  while  hating  her  art,  is  her 
secret,  she  tells  us ;  hinting  that  it  is  sorrow, 
discontent,  thwarted  desires,  that  have  tor- 
tured and  exalted  her  into  a  kind  of  martyr- 
dom of  artistic  mastery,  on  the  other  side  of 


ELEONORA  DUSE  338 

which  the  serenity  of  a  pained  but  indomit- 
able soul  triumphs. 

To  those  who  have  seen  Duse  only  across 
the  footlights,  Duse  must  be  impenetrable, 
almost  the  contradiction  of  herself.  As  one 
talks  with  her  one  begins  to  realise  the  artist 
through  the  woman.  There  is  in  her  a 
sombre  and  hypnotic  quietude,  as  she  broods 
in  meditation,  her  beautiful,  firm  hand  grasp- 
ing the  arm  of  the  chair  without  movement, 
but  so  tightly  that  the  knuckles  grow  rigid  ; 
her  body  droops  sideways  in  the  chair,  her 
head  rests  on  her  other  hand,  the  eyes  are 
like  a  drowsy  flame  ;  the  whole  body  thinks. 
Her  face  is  sad  with  thought,  with  the  pass- 
ing over  it  of  all  the  emotions  of  the  world, 
which  she  has  felt  twice  over,  in  her  own 
flesh,  and  in  the  creative  energy  of  her  spirit. 
Her  stillness  is  the  stillness  of  one  in  the 
act  to  spring.  There  is  no  transition  from 
the  energy  of  speech  to  the  energy  of  silence. 
When  she  speaks,  the  words  leap  from  her 
lips  one  after  another,  hurrying,  but  always 
in  coloured  clothes,  and  with  beautiful  move- 
ments. As  she  listens  silently  to  music,  she 
seems  to  remember,  and  to  drink  in  nourish- 
ment for  her  soul,  as  she  drinks  in  perfume, 


334       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

greedily,  from  flowers,  as  she  possesses  a 
book  or  a  picture,  almost  with  violence.  I 
have  never  seen  a  woman  so  passionate  after 
beauty,  I  have  never  seen  a  woman  so 
devoured  by  the  life  of  the  soul,  by  the  life 
of  the  mind,  by  the  life  of  the  body. 

When  she  talks  intently  with  some  one 
whose  ideas  interest  her,  she  leaves  her 
chair,  comes  and  sits  down  quite  close,  leans 
over  till  her  face  almost  touches  one's  face, 
the  eyes  opening  wider  and  wider  until  one 
sees  an  entire  rim  of  white  about  the  great 
brown  pupils;  but,  though  she  occasionally 
makes  a  gesture,  she  never  touches  one, 
never  lays  her  hand  on  one's  sleeve ;  remains 
impersonal,  though  so  close.  Her  intent 
eyes  see  nothing  but  the  ideas  behind  one's 
forehead ;  she  has  no  sense  of  the  human 
nearness  of  body  to  body,  only  of  the  intel- 
lectual closeness  of  soul  to  soul.  She  is  a 
woman  always,  but  she  is  a  woman  almost 
in  the  abstract ;  the  senses  are  asleep,  or 
awake  only  to  give  passion  and  substance 
to  the  disembodied  energy  of  the  intellect. 
When  she  speaks  of  beautiful  things  her 
face  takes  light  as  from  an  inner  source ; 
the  dark  and  pallid  cheeks  curve  into  sensi- 


ELEONORA  DUSE  335 

tive  folds,  the  small,  thin-lipped  mouth, 
scarcely  touched  with  colour,  grows  half 
tender,  half  ironical,  as  if  smiling  at  its  own 
abandonment  to  delight ;  an  exquisite  tremor 
awakens  in  it,  as  if  it  brushed  against  the 
petal  of  a  flower,  and  thrilled  at  the  con- 
tact ;  then  the  mouth  opens,  freely,  and  the 
strong  white  teeth  glitter  in  a  vehement 
smile. 

I  have  seen  her  before  a  Rodin,  a  Whistler, 
and  a  Turner.  As  she  handled  the  little 
piece  of  clay,  in  which  two  figures,  sug- 
gested, not  expressed,  embrace  passionately, 
in  a  tightening  quiver  of  the  whole  body, 
which  seems  to  thrill  under  one's  eyesight, 
it  seemed  as  if  force  drank  in  force  until  the 
soul  of  the  woman  passed  into  the  clay,  and 
the  soul  of  the  clay  passed  into  the  woman. 
As  she  stood  before  the  portrait  of  Carlyle, 
which  she  had  never  seen,  though  a  photo- 
graph of  it  goes  with  her  wherever  she  goes, 
there  was  the  quietude  of  content,  perfect 
satisfaction,  before  a  piece  of  ardent  and  yet 
chastened  perfection.  As  she  moved  about 
the  room  of  the  Turners,  in  the  National 
Gallery,  it  was  with  little  cries,  with  a  sort 
of  unquiet  joy.     '  The  dear  madman  ! '  she 


336       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

repeated,  before  picture  after  picture,  in 
which  a  Venice,  so  false  to  the  Venice  which 
she  knew,  so  true  to  a  Venice  which  had 
been  actually  thus  seen,  rose  up  Uke  a  mist 
of  opals,  all  soft  flame  and  rushing  light. 
And,  her  eyes  full  of  that  intoxication,  she 
almost  ran  out  of  the  gallery,  refusing  to 
look  to  right  or  left,  that  she  might  shut 
down  her  eyelids  upon  their  vision. 


n 

Here  are  a  few  of  her  words,  written  down 
from  memory,  as  nearly  as  I  can  in  the  way 
she  said  them ;  but  how  empty,  as  I  see 
them  written  down,  of  the  colour  and  life  of 
the  words  themselves ! 

'  To  save  the  theatre,  the  theatre  must  be 
destroyed,  the  actors  and  actresses  must  all 
die  of  the  plague.  They  poison  the  air,  they 
make  art  impossible.  It  is  not  drama  that 
they  play,  but  pieces  for  the  theatre.  We 
should  return  to  the  Greeks,  play  in  the  open 
air  ;  the  drama  dies  of  stalls  and  boxes  and 
evening  dress,  and  people  who  come  to  digest 
their  dinner. 


ELEONORA  DUSE  337 

'The  one  happiness  is  to  shut  one's  door 
upon  a  little  room,  with  a  table  before  one, 
and  to  create ;  to  create  life  in  that  isolation 
from  life. 

'  We  must  bow  before  the  poet,  even  when 
it  seems  to  us  that  he  does  wrong.  He  is  a 
poet,  he  has  seen  something,  he  has  seen  it 
in  that  way ;  we  must  accept  his  vision, 
because  it  is  vision. 

'  Since  Shakespeare  and  the  Greeks  there 
has  been  no  great  dramatist,  and  these 
gathered  up  into  themselves  the  whole  life 
of  the  people  and  the  whole  work  of  their 
contemporaries.  When  we  say  Shakespeare 
we  mean  all  the  Elizabethan  drama.  Ibsen  ? 
Ibsen  is  like  this  room  where  we  are  sitting, 
with  all  the  tables  and  chairs.  Do  I  care 
whether  you  have  twenty  or  twenty-five 
links  on  your  chain  ?  Hedda  Gabler,  Nora 
and  the  rest :  it  is  not  that  I  want !  I  want 
Rome  and  the  Coliseum,  the  Acropolis, 
Athens ;  I  want  beauty,  and  the  flame  of 
life.  Maeterlinck  ?  I  adore  Maeterlinck. 
Maeterlinck  is  a  flower.  But  he  only  gives 
me  figures  in  a  mist.  Yes,  as  you  say, 
children  and  spirits. 

'  I  have  tried,  I  have  failed,  I  am  con- 

Y 


338       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

demned  to  play  Sardou  and  Pinero.  Some 
day  another  woman  will  come,  young, 
beautiful,  a  being  all  of  fire  and  flame,  and 
will  do  what  I  have  dreamed ;  yes,  I  am 
sure  of  it,  it  will  come ;  but  I  am  tired,  at 
my  age  I  cannot  begin  over  again.  Ah,  my 
dear  friend  (to  Dolmetsch)  how  happy  you 
are  here.  What  are  those  boards  up  there  ? 
You  have  had  them  for  twelve  years,  you 
say,  and  they  are  ripening  to  be  made  into 
instruments ;  they  are  only  boards  now,  one 
day  they  will  sing.  My  head  is  full  of  old 
boards  like  that. 

'Rossetti  is  like  a  perverse  young  man  who 
has  been  nicely  brought  up  :  he  does  not  give 
himself  up  to  it,  he  is  only  half  himself. 
Look  at  Watts's  portrait :  the  fine,  mad 
eyes,  and  then  the  weak  and  heavy  chin. 
The  eyes  desire  some  feverish  thing,  but  the 
mouth  and  chin  hesitate  in  pursuit.  All 
Rossetti  is  in  that  story  of  the  MS.  buried 
in  his  wife's  coflan.  He  could  do  it,  he  could 
repent  of  it ;  but  he  should  have  gone  and 
taken  it  back  himself:  he  sent  his  friends  ! 

*  Rossetti's  Italian  verse,  how  can  I  give 
you  an  idea  of  it  ?  Suppose  a  blind  man, 
and  one  puts  before  him  a  bouquet  of  flowers, 


ELEONORA  DUSE  339 

and  he  smells  it,  and  says  :  "  This  is  jasmine, 
and  this  is  a  rose,"  but  he  says  it  like  one 
who  does  not  know  flowers. 

'At  Athens,  in  the  Museum,  there  is  the 
mask  of  a  tragic  actress ;  the  passion  of 
sorrow,  seen  for  a  moment  on  the  face  of  a 
woman  on  the  stage,  is  engraved  into  it,  like 
a  seal.  In  Rome,  quite  lately,  they  have 
found  a  bronze  head,  which  has  lain  under 
water  for  centuries  ;  the  features  are  almost 
effaced,  but  it  is  beautiful,  as  if  veiled ;  the 
water  has  passed  over  it  like  a  caress. 

'  I  have  known  Wagner  in  Venice,  I  have 
been  in  Bayreuth,  and  I  saw  in  Wagner 
what  I  feel  in  his  music,  a  touch  of  some- 
thing a  little  conscious  in  his  supremacy. 
Wagner  said  to  himself:  "  I  will  do  what  I 
want  to  do,  I  will  force  the  world  to  accept 
me  "  ;  and  he  succeeded,  but  not  in  making 
us  forget  his  intention.  The  music,  after 
all,  never  quite  abandons  itself,  is  never 
quite  without  self-consciousness,  it  is  a 
tremendous  sensuality,  not  the  unconscious- 
ness of  passion.  When  Beethoven  writes 
music  he  forgets  both  himself  and  the  world, 
is  conscious  only  of  joy,  or  sorrow,  or  the 
mood  which  has  taken  him  for  its  voice. 


340       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

'Do  you  remember  what  Flaubert,  that 
little  priest,  said  of  Shakespeare  ?  "  If  I  had 
met  Shakespeare  on  the  stairs,  I  should  have 
fainted."  The  people  I  would  like  to  have 
met  are  Shakespeare  and  Velasquez. 

'Could  I  live  without  the  stage?  You 
should  not  have  said  that.  I  have  passed 
three  years  without  acting.  I  act  because  I 
would  rather  do  other  things.  If  I  had  my 
will  I  would  live  in  a  ship  on  the  sea,  and 
never  come  nearer  to  humanity  than  that.' 


Ill 

The  face  of  Duse  is  a  mask  for  the  tragic 
passions,  a  mask  which  changes  from  moment 
to  moment,  as  the  soul  models  the  clay  of 
the  body  after  its  own  changing  image. 
Imagine  Kodin  at  work  on  a  lump  of  clay. 
The  shapeless  thing  awakens  under  his 
fingers,  a  vague  life  creeps  into  it,  hesitat- 
ing among  the  forms  of  life;  it  is  desire, 
waiting  to  be  born,  and  it  may  be  born  as 
pity  or  anguish,  love  or  pride  ;  so  fluid  is  it 
to  the  touch,  so  humbly  does  it  await  the 
accident  of  choice.  The  face  of  Duse  is 
like  the  clay  under  the  fingers  of  Hodin. 


ELEONORA  DUSE  341 

But  with  her  there  can  be  no  choice,  no 
arresting  moment  of  repose  ;  but  an  endless 
flowing  onward  of  emotion,  like  tide  flowing 
after  tide,  moulding  and  effacing  continually. 
Watch  her  in  that  scene  of  '  La  Dame  aux 
Cam^lias,'  where  Armand's  father  pleads  with 
Marguerite  to  give  up  her  lover  for  the  sake 
of  her  love.  She  sits  there  quietly  beside 
the  table,  listening  and  saying  nothing, 
thinking  mournfully,  debating  with  herself, 
conquering  herself,  making  the  great  deci- 
sion. The  outline  of  the  face  is  motionless, 
set  hard,  clenched  into  immobility ;  but 
within  that  motionless  outline  every  nerve 
seems  awake,  expression  after  expression 
sweeps  over  it,  each  complete  for  its  instant, 
each  distinct,  each  like  the  finished  expres- 
sion of  the  sculptor,  rather  than  the  uncertain 
forms  of  life,  as  they  appear  to  us  in  passing. 
The  art  of  the  actor,  it  is  supposed,  is  to  give, 
above  all  things,  this  sense  of  the  passing 
moment,  and  to  give  it  by  a  vivacity  in 
expression  which  shall  more  than  compete 
with  life  itself  That  is  the  effective  thing ; 
but  what  Duse  does  is,  after  all,  the  right 
thing.  We  have  rarely,  in  real  life,  the 
leisure  to  watch  an  emotion  in  which  we 


342       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

are  the  sharers.  But  there  are  moments, 
in  any  great  crisis,  when  the  soul  seems  to 
stand  back  and  look  out  of  impersonal  eyes, 
seeing  things  as  they  are.  At  such  moments 
it  is  possible  to  become  aware  of  the  beauty, 
the  actual  plastic  beauty,  of  passionate  or 
sorrowful  emotion,  as  it  interprets  itself,  in 
all  its  succession  of  moods,  upon  the  face. 
At  such  moments,  as  at  the  supreme  moment 
of  death,  all  the  nobility  of  which  a  soul  is 
capable  comes  transformingly  into  the  body  ; 
which  is  then,  indeed,  neither  the  handmaid, 
nor  the  accomplice,  nor  the  impediment  of 
the  soul,  but  the  soul's  visible  identity.  The 
art  of  Duse  is  to  do  over  again,  consciously, 
this  sculpture  of  the  soul  upon  the  body. 

The  reason  why  Duse  is  the  greatest  actress 
in  the  world  is  that  she  has  a  more  subtle 
nature  than  any  other  actress,  and  that  she 
expresses  her  nature  more  simply.  All  her 
acting  seems  to  come  from  a  great  depth, 
and  to  be  only  half  telling  profound  secrets. 
No  play  has  ever  been  profound  enough,  and 
simple  enough,  for  this  woman  to  say  every- 
thing she  has  to  say  in  it.  When  she  has 
thrilled  one,  or  made  one  weep,  or  exalted 
one  with   beauty,  she  seems  to  be  always 


ELEONORA  DUSE  343 

holding  back  something  else.  Her  supreme 
distinction  comes  from  the  kind  of  melan- 
choly wisdom  which  remains  in  her  face  after 
the  passions  have  swept  over  it.  Other 
actresses  seem  to  have  heaped  up  into  one 
great,  fictitious  moment  all  the  scattered 
energies  of  their  lives,  the  passions  that  have 
come  to  nothing,  the  sensations  that  have 
withered  before  they  flowered,  the  thoughts 
that  have  never  quite  been  born.  The  stage 
is  their  life  ;  they  live  only  for  those  three 
hours  of  the  night ;  before  and  after  are  the 
intervals  between  the  acts.  But  to  Duse 
those  three  hours  are  the  interval  in  an  in- 
tense, consistent,  strictly  personal  life  ;  and, 
the  interval  over,  she  returns  to  herself,  as 
after  an  interruption. 

And  this  unique  fact  makes  for  her  the 
particular  quality  of  her  genius.  When  she 
is  on  the  stage  she  does  not  appeal  to  us 
with  the  conscious  rhetoric  of  the  actress ; 
she  lets  us  overlook  her,  with  an  uncon- 
sciousness which  study  has  formed  into  a 
second  nature.  When  she  is  on  the  stage 
she  is  always  thinking ;  at  times,  when  the 
playing  of  her  part  is  to  her  a  mere  piece  of 
contemptuous  mechanism,  she  thinks  of  other 


344       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

things,  and  her  acting  suddenly  becomes  act- 
ing, as  in  '  Fedora '  and  all  but  the  end  of 
'  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray.'  At  every 
moment  of  a  play  in  which  emotion  becomes 
sincere,  intelligent,  or  in  which  it  is  possible 
to  transform  an  artificial  thing  into  reality, 
she  is  profoundly  true  to  the  character  she 
is  representing,  by  being  more  and  more 
profoundly  herself.  Then  it  is  Magda,  or 
Gioconda,  or  Marguerite  Gautier  who  thinks, 
feels,  lives,  endures  love  and  anguish  and 
shame  and  happiness  before  us ;  and  it  is 
Magda,  or  Gioconda,  or  Marguerite  Gautier 
because  it  is  the  primary  emotion,  the  passion 
itself,  everything  in  it  which  is  most  personal 
because  it  is  most  universal. 

To  act  as  Duse  acts,  with  an  art  which  is 
properly  the  antithesis  of  what  we  call 
acting,  is,  no  doubt,  to  fail  in  a  lesser  thing 
in  order  to  triumph  in  a  greater.  Her 
greatest  moments  are  the  moments  of  most 
intense  quietness ;  she  does  not  send  a 
shudder  through  the  whole  house,  as  Sarah 
Bernhardt  does,  playing  on  one's  nerves  as 
on  a  violin.  '  Action,'  with  her  as  with 
Rimbaud,  '  is  a  way  of  spoiling  something,' 
when  once  action  has  mastered  thought,  and 


ELEONORA  DUSE  345 

got  loose  to  work  its  own  way  in  the  world. 
It  is  a  disturbance,  not  an  end  in  itself;  and 
the  very  expression  of  emotion,  with  her,  is 
all  a  restraint,  the  quieting  down  of  a  tumult 
until  only  the  pained  reflection  of  it  glimmers 
out  of  her  eyes,  and  trembles  among  the 
hollows  of  her  cheeks.  Contrast  her  art 
with  the  art  of  Irving,  to  whom  acting  is  at 
once  a  science  and  a  tradition.  To  Irving 
acting  is  all  that  the  word  literally  means ; 
it  is  an  art  of  sharp,  detached,  yet  always 
delicate  movement ;  he  crosses  the  stage 
with  intention,  as  he  intentionally  adopts 
a  fine,  crabbed,  personal,  highly  conventional 
elocution  of  his  own  ;  he  is  an  actor,  and  he 
acts,  keeping  nature,  or  the  too  close  sem- 
blance of  nature,  carefully  out  of  his  com- 
position. He  has  not  gone  to  himself  to 
invent  an  art  wholly  personal,  wholly  new ; 
his  acting  is  no  interruption  of  an  intense 
inner  life,  but  a  craftsmanship  into  which  he 
has  put  all  he  has  to  give.  It  is  an  art 
wholly  rhetoric,  that  is  to  say  wholly  ex- 
ternal ;  his  emotion  moves  to  slow  music, 
crystallises  into  an  attitude,  dies  upon  a 
long-drawn-out  word.  And  it  is  this  ex- 
ternal, rhetorical  art,  this  dramatised  oratory, 


346       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

that  we  have  always  understood  as  acting, 
until  Duse  came  upon  the  stage  with  new 
ideas  and  a  new  method.  At  once  rhetoric 
disappeared,  with  all  that  is  obvious  in  its 
loss,  as  well  as  what  is  somewhat  less 
obviously  gained  by  it.  Duse's  art,  in  this, 
is  like  the  art  of  Verlaine  in  French  poetry ; 
always  suggestion,  never  statement,  always 
a  renunciation.  It  comes  into  the  move- 
ment of  all  the  arts,  as  they  seek  to  escape 
from  the  bondage  of  form,  by  a  new,  finer 
mastery  of  form,  wrought  outwards  from 
within,  not  from  without  inwards.  And  it 
conquers  almost  the  last  obstacle,  as  it  turns 
the  one  wholly  external  art,  based  upon 
mere  imitation,  existing  upon  the  commonest 
terms  of  illusion,  triumphing  by  exaggeration, 
into  an  art  wholly  subtle,  almost  spiritual,  a 
suggestion,  an  evasion,  a  secrecy. 

1900. 


A  NEW  ART  OF  THE  STAGE 


A.  NEW   AUT    OF   THE   STAGE 


In  the  remarkable  experiments  of  Mr. 
Gordon  Craig,  I  seem  to  see  the  suggestion 
of  a  new  art  of  the  stage,  an  art  no  longer 
realistic,  but  conventional,  no  longer  imita- 
tive, but  symbolical.  In  Mr.  Craig's  staging 
there  is  the  incalculable  element,  the  element 
that  comes  of  itself,  and  cannot  be  coaxed 
into  coming.  But  in  what  is  incalculable 
there  may  be  equal  parts  of  inspiration  and 
of  accident.  How  much,  in  Mr.  Craig's 
staging,  is  inspiration,  how  much  is  acci- 
dent 1  That  is,  after  all,  the  important 
question. 

Mr.  Craig,  it  is  certain,  has  a  genius  for 
line,  for  novel  effects  of  line.  His  line  is 
entirely  his  own ;  he  works  in  squares  and 
straight  lines,  hardly  ever  in  curves.  He 
drapes  the  stage  into  a  square  with  cloths  ; 


350       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

he  divides  these  cloths  by  vertical  lines, 
carrying  the  eye  straight  up  to  an  immense 
height,  fixing  it  into  a  rigid  attention.  He 
sets  squares  of  pattern  and  structure  on  the 
stage ;  he  forms  his  groups  into  irregular 
squares,  and  sets  them  moving  in  straight 
lines,  which  double  on  themselves  like  the 
two  arms  of  a  compass ;  he  puts  square 
patterns  on  the  dresses,  and  drapes  the 
arms  with  ribbons  that  hang  to  the  ground, 
and  make  almost  a  square  of  the  body  when 
the  arms  are  held  out  at  right  angles.  He 
prefers  gestures  that  have  no  curves  in 
them ;  the  arms  held  straight  up,  or 
straight  forward,  or  straight  out  sideways. 
He  likes  the  act  of  kneeling,  in  which  the 
body  is  bent  into  a  sharp  angle ;  he  likes  a 
sudden  spring  to  the  feet,  with  the  arms 
held  straight  up.  He  links  his  groups  by 
an  arrangement  of  poles  and  ribbons,  some- 
thing in  the  manner  of  a  maypole ;  each 
figure  is  held  to  the  centre  by  a  tightly 
stretched  line  like  the  spoke  of  a  wheel. 
Even  when,  as  in  this  case,  the  pattern 
forms  into  a  circle,  the  circle  is  segmented 
by  straight  lines. 

This    severe     treatment     of    line     gives 


A  NEW  ART  OF  THE  STAGE    351 

breadth  and  dignity  to  what  might  other- 
wise be  merely  fantastic.  Mr.  Craig  is 
happiest  when  he  can  play  at  children's 
games  with  his  figures,  as  in  almost  the 
whole  of  'The  Masque  of  Love.'  When  he 
is  entirely  his  own  master,  not  dependent 
on  any  kind  of  reality,  he  invents  really 
like  a  child,  and  his  fairy-tale  comes  right, 
because  it  is  not  tied  by  any  grown-up 
logic.  Then  his  living  design  is  like  an 
arabesque  within  strict  limits,  held  in  from 
wandering  and  losing  itself  by  those  square 
lines  which  rim  it  implacably  round. 

Then,  again,  his  effects  are  produced 
simply.  Most  of  the  costumes  in  *  The 
Masque  of  Love '  were  made  of  sacking, 
stitched  roughly  together.  Under  the  cun- 
ning handling  of  the  light,  they  gave  you 
any  illusion  you  pleased,  and  the  beggars 
of  the  masque  were  not  more  appropriately 
clothed  than  the  kings  and  queens.  All 
had  dignity,  all  reposed  the  eye. 

The  aim  of  modern  staging  is  to  in- 
tensify the  reality  of  things,  to  give  you 
the  illusion  of  an  actual  room,  or  meadow, 
or  mountain.  We  have  arrived  at  a  great 
skill  in  giving  this  crude  illusion  of  reality. 


352       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

Our  stage  painters  can  imitate  anything, 
but  what  they  cannot  give  us  is  the 
emotion  which  the  playwright,  if  he  is  an 
artist,  wishes  to  indicate  by  means  of  his 
scene.  It  is  the  very  closeness  of  the 
imitation  which  makes  our  minds  unable 
to  accept  it.  The  eye  rebounds,  so  to 
speak,  from  this  canvas  as  real  as  wood, 
this  wood  as  real  as  water,  this  water  which 
is  actual  water.  Mr.  Craig  aims  at  taking 
us  beyond  reality  ;  he  replaces  the  pattern 
of  the  thiug  itself  by  the  pattern  which 
that  thing  evokes  in  his  mind,  the  symbol 
of  the  thing.  As,  in  conventional  art,  the 
artist  unpicks  the  structure  of  the  rose  to 
build  up  a  mental  image  of  the  rose,  in 
some  formal  pattern  which  his  brain  makes 
over  again,  like  a  new  creation  from  the 
beginning,  a  new  organism,  so,  in  this  new 
convention  of  the  stage,  a  plain  cloth, 
modulated  by  light,  can  stand  for  space 
or  for  limit,  may  be  the  tight  walls  of  a 
tent  or  the  sky  and  the  clouds.  The  eye 
loses  itself  among  these  severe,  precise,  and 
yet  mysterious  lines  and  surfaces ;  the  mind 
is  easily  at  home  in  them ;  it  accepts  them 
as  readily  as  it  accepts  the  convention  by 


A  NEW  ART  OF  THE  STAGE    353 

which,    in   a   poetical   play,    men    speak   in 
verse  rather  than  in  prose. 

Success,  of  course,  in  this  form  of  art  lies 
in  the  perfecting  of  its  emotional  expressive- 
ness. Even  yet  Mr.  Craig  has  not  done 
much  more,  perhaps,  than  indicate  what 
may  be  done  with  the  material  which  he 
finds  in  his  hands.  For  instance,  the 
obvious  criticism  upon  his  mounting  of 
'  Acis  and  Galatea '  is,  that  he  has  mounted 
a  pastoral,  and  put  nothing  pastoral  into 
his  mounting.  And  this  criticism  is  partly 
just.  Yet  there  are  parts,  especially  the 
end  of  Act  l.,  where  he  has  perfectly 
achieved  the  rendering  of  pastoral  feehng 
according  to  his  own  convention.  The  tent 
is  there  with  its  square  walls,  not  a  glimpse 
of  meadow  or  sky  comes  into  the  severe 
design,  and  yet,  as  the  nymphs  in  their 
straight  dresses  and  straight  ribbons  lie 
back  laughing  on  the  ground,  and  the 
children,  with  their  little  modern  brown 
straw  hats,  toss  paper  roses  among  them, 
and  the  coloured  balloons  (which  you  may 
buy  in  the  street  for  a  penny)  are  tossed 
into  the  air,  carrying  the  eye  upward,  as 
if  it  saw  the  wind  chasing  the  clouds,  you 

z 


354       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

feel  the  actual  sensation  of  a  pastoral  scene, 
of  country  joy,  of  the  spring  and  the  open 
air,  as  no  trickle  of  real  water  in  a  trough, 
no  sheaves  of  real  corn  among  painted  trees, 
no  imitation  of  a  flushed  sky  on  canvas, 
could  trick  you  into  feeling  it.  The  imagi- 
nation has  been  caught ;  a  suggestion  has 
been  given  v^^hich  strikes  straight  to  '  the 
nerves  of  delight ' ;  and  be  sure  those 
nerves,  that  imagination,  will  do  the  rest, 
better,  more  efi'ectually,  than  the  deliberate 
assent  of  the  eyes  to  an  imitation  of  natural 
appearances. 

Take  again  some  of  those  drawings  of 
stage  scenery  which  we  have  not  yet  been 
able  to  see  realised,  the  decoration  for 
Hofmannsthal's  'Elektra'  and  'Venice  Pre- 
served,' and  for  'Hamlet'  and  for  'The 
Masque  of  London.'  Everywhere  a  wild 
and  exquisite  scenic  imagination  builds  up 
shadowy  structures  which  seem  to  have 
arisen  by  some  strange  hazard,  and  to  the 
sound  of  an  unfamiliar  music,  and  which 
are  often  literally  like  music  in  the  cadences 
of  their  design.  All  have  dignity,  remote- 
ness, vastness ;  a  sense  of  mystery,  an 
actual    emotion    in    their    lines    and    faint 


A  NEW  ART  OF  THE  STAGE    355 

colours.  There  is  poetry  in  this  bare  prose 
framework  of  stage  properties,  a  quality  of 
grace  which  is  almost  evasive,  and  seems  to 
point  out  new  possibilities  of  drama,  as  it 
provides  new,  scarcely  hoped  for,  possi- 
bilities to  the  dramatist. 

Take,  for  instance,  '  The  Masque  of 
London.'  It  is  Piranesi,  and  it  is  London 
of  to-day,  seen  in  lineal  vision,  and  it  is 
a  design,  not  merely  on  paper,  but  built  up 
definitely  between  the  wings  of  the  stage. 
It  is  a  vast  scaffolding,  rising  out  of  ruins, 
and  ascending  to  toppling  heights ;  all  its 
crazy  shapes  seem  to  lean  over  in  the  air, 
and  at  intervals  a  little  weary  being  climbs 
with  obscure  patience.  In  one  of  the 
'  Hamlet '  drawings  we  see  the  room  in  the 
castle  at  Elsinore  into  which  Ophelia  is  to 
come  with  her  bewildered  singing ;  and  the 
room  waits,  tall,  vague,  exquisitely  still  and 
strange,  a  ghostly  room,  prepared  for  beauty 
and  madness.  There  is  another  room,  with 
tall  doors  and  windows  and  abrupt  pools  of 
light  on  the  floor ;  and  another,  with  its 
significant  shadows,  its  two  enigmatic 
figures,  in  which  a  drama  of  Maeterlinck 
might  find  its  own  atmosphere  awaiting  it. 


356       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

And  in  yet  another  all  is  gesture ;  walls, 
half-opened  doors,  half-seen  windows,  the 
huddled  people  at  a  doorway,  and  a  tall 
figure  of  a  woman  raised  up  in  the  fore- 
ground, who  seems  to  motion  to  them 
vehemently.  Colour  co-operates  with  line 
in  effects  of  rich  and  yet  delicate  vague- 
ness ;  there  are  always  the  long,  straight 
lines,  the  sense  of  height  and  space,  the 
bare  surfaces,  the  subtle,  significant 
shadows,  out  of  which  Mr.  Craig  has  long 
since  learned  to  evoke  stage  pictures  more 
beautiful  and  more  suggestive  than  any 
that  have  been  seen  on  the  stage  in  our 
time. 

The  whole  stage  art  of  Mr.  Craig  is  a 
protest  against  realism,  and  it  is  to  realism 
that  we  owe  whatever  is  most  conspicuously 
bad  in  the  mounting  of  plays  at  the  present 
day.  Wagner  did  some  of  the  harm;  for 
he  refused  to  realise  some  of  the  necessary 
limitations  of  stage  illusion,  and  persisted 
in  believing  that  the  stage  artist  could 
compete  successfully  with  nature  in  the 
production  of  landscape,  light,  and  shadow. 
Yet  Wagner  himself  protested  against  the 
heaps   of    unrealising    detail    under    which 


A  NEW  ART  OF  THE  STAGE    357 

Shakespeare  was  buried,  in  his  own  time, 
on  the  German  stage,  as  he  is  buried  on 
the  English  stage  in  our  own.  No  scene- 
painter,  no  scene-shifter,  no  limelight  man, 
will  ever  delude  us  by  his  moon  or  meadow 
or  moving  clouds  or  water.  His  business  is 
to  aid  the  poet's  illusion,  that  illusion  of 
beauty  which  is  the  chief  excuse  for  stage 
plays  at  all,  when  once  we  have  passed 
beyond  the  'rose-pink  and  dirty  drab,'  in 
Meredith's  sufficing  phrase,  of  stage  romance 
and  stage  reality.  The  distinction,  the  in- 
comparable merit,  of  Mr.  Craig  is  that 
he  conceives  his  setting  as  the  poet  con- 
ceives his  drama.  The  verse  in  most 
Shakespearean  revivals  rebounds  from  a 
backcloth  of  metallic  solidity ;  the  scenery 
shuts  in  the  players,  not  upon  Shake- 
speare's dream,  but  upon  as  nearly  as 
possible  '  real '  historical  hric-a-brac.  What 
Mr.  Craig  does,  or  would  do  if  he  were 
allowed  to  do  it,  is  to  open  all  sorts  of 
'  magic  casements,'  and  to  thrust  back  all 
kinds  of  real  and  probable  limits,  and  to 
give  at  last  a  little  scope  for  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  playwright  who  is  also  a  poet. 
I  do  not  yet  know  of  what  Mr.  Craig  is 


358       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

capable,  how  far  he  can  carry  his  happy 
natural  gifts  towards  mastery.  But  he  has 
done  so  much  already  that  I  want  to  see 
him  doing  more ;  I  want  to  see  him  accept- 
ing all  the  difficulties  of  his  new  art 
frankly,  and  grappling  with  them.  For  the 
staging  of  Maeterlinck,  especially  for  such 
a  play  as  '  La  Mort  de  Tintagiles,'  his  art, 
just  as  it  is,  would  suffice.  Here  are  plays 
which  exist  anywhere  in  space,  which  evade 
reality,  which  do  all  they  can  to  become 
disembodied  in  the  very  moment  in  which 
they  become  visible.  They  have  atmosphere 
without  locality,  and  that  is  what  Mr.  Craig 
can  give  us  so  easily.  But  I  would  like 
to  see  him  stage  an  opera  of  Wagner, 
'  Tristan,'  or  the  '  Meistersinger '  even. 
Wagner  has  perfected  at  Bayreuth  his  own 
conception  of  what  scenery  should  be ;  he 
has  done  better  than  any  one  else  what 
most  other  stage- craftsmen  have  been  try- 
ing to  do.  He  allows  more  than  they  do 
to  convention,  but  even  his  convention  aims 
at  convincing  the  eye;  the  dragon  of  the 
'  Ring '  is  as  real  a  beast  as  Wagner  could 
invent  in  his  competition  with  nature's  in- 
vention  of   the   snake   and    the    crocodile. 


A  NEW  ART  OF  THE  STAGE    359 

But  there  are  those  who  prefer  Wagner's 
music  in  the  concert-room  to  Wagner's 
music  even  at  Bayreuth.  Unless  the  whole 
aim  and  theory  of  Wagner  was  wrong,  this 
preference  is  wrong.  I  should  like,  at  least 
as  an  experiment,  to  see  what  Mr.  Craig 
would  make  of  one  of  the  operas.  I  am 
not  sure  that  he  would  not  reconcile  those 
who  prefer  Wagner  in  the  concert-room  to 
this  new  kind  of  performance  on  the  stage. 
He  would  give  us  the  mind's  attractive 
symbols  of  all  these  crude  German  pictures ; 
he  would  strike  away  the  footlights  from 
before  these  vast  German  singers,  and  bring 
a  ghostly  light  to  creep  down  about  their 
hoods  and  untightened  drapings  ;  he  would 
bring,  I  think,  the  atmosphere  of  the  music 
for  the  first  time  upon  the  stage. 

Then  I  would  like  to  see  Mr.  Craig  go 
further  still ;  I  would  like  to  see  him  deal 
with  a  purely  modern  play,  a  play  which 
takes  place  indoors,  in  the  house  of  middle- 
class  people.  He  should  mount  the  typical 
modern  play,  Ibsen's  'Ghosts.'  Think  of 
that  room  '  in  Mrs.  Alving's  country-house, 
beside  one  of  the  large  fjords  in  Western 
Norway.'     Do    you    remember    the    stage 


360       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

directions?  In  the  first  act  the  glimpse, 
through  the  glass  windows  of  the  conserva- 
tory, of  *  a  gloomy  fjord  landscape,  veiled  by 
steady  rain ' ;  in  the  second  '  the  mist  still 
lies  heavy  over  the  landscape '  ;  in  the  third 
the  lamp  burning  on  the  table,  the  darkness 
outside,  the  '  faint  glow  from  the  conflagra- 
tion.' And  always  '  the  room  as  before/ 
What  might  not  Mr.  Craig  do  with  that 
room !  What,  precisely,  I  do  not  know ; 
but  I  am  sure  that  his  method  is  capable  of 
an  extension  which  will  take  in  that  room, 
and,  if  it  can  take  in  that  room,  it  can  take 
in  all  of  modern  life  which  is  of  importance 
to  the  playwright. 


II 

Most  people  begin  with  theory,  and  go 
on,  if  they  go  on,  to  carry  their  theory  into 
practice.  Mr.  Gordon  Craig  has  done  a 
better  thing,  and,  having  begun  by  creating 
a  new  art  of  the  stage  on  the  actual  boards 
of  the  theatre,  has  followed  up  his  practical 
demonstration  by  a  book  of  theory,  in  which 
he  explains  what  he  has  done,  telling  us  also 
what  he  hopes  to    do.     '  The  Art   of   the 


A  NEW  ART  OF  THE  STAGE    361 

Theatre '  is  a  little  book,  hardly  more  than 
a  pamphlet,  hut  every  page  is  full  of  origiDal 
thought.  Until  I  read  it,  I  was  not  sure 
how  much  in  Mr.  Craig's  work  was  intention 
and  how  much  happy  accident.  Whether 
or  not  we  agree  with  every  part  of  his  theory, 
he  has  left  no  part  unthought  out.  His 
theory,  then,  in  brief,  is  this :  he  defines 
the  theatre  as  '  a  place  in  which  the  entire 
beauty  of  life  can  be  unfolded,  and  not  only 
the  external  beauty  of  the  world,  but  the 
inner  beauty  and  meaning  of  life.'  He 
would  make  the  theatre  a  temple  in  which 
a  continual  ceremony  unfolds  and  proclaims 
the  beauty  of  life,  and,  like  the  churches  of 
other  religions,  it  is  to  be,  not  for  the  few, 
but  for  the  people.  The  art  of  the  theatre 
is  to  be  *  neither  acting  nor  the  play,  it  is 
not  scene  nor  dance,  but  it  consists  of  all 
the  elements  of  which  these  things  are 
composed :  action,  which  is  the  very  spirit 
of  acting  ;  words,  which  are  the  body  of  the 
play ;  line  and  colour,  which  are  the  very 
heart  of  the  scene ;  rhythm,  which  is  the 
very  essence  of  dance.'  The  art  of  the 
theatre  is  addressed  in  the  first  place  to  the 
eyes,  and  the  first  dramatist  spoke  through 


362       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

'  poetic  action,  which  is  dance,  or  prose 
action,  which  is  gesture.'  In  the  modern 
theatre  a  play  is  no  longer  '  a  balance  of 
actions,  words,  dance  and  scene,  but  it  is 
either  all  words  or  all  scene.'  The  business 
of  the  stage  director,  who  is  to  be  the  artist 
of  the  theatre,  is  to  bring  back  the  theatre 
to  its  true  purpose.  He  begins  by  taking 
the  dramatist's  play,  and  sets  himself  to 
interpret  it  visibly  on  the  boards.  He 
reads  it  and  gets  his  general  impression ; 
'  he  first  of  all  chooses  certain  colours, 
which  seem  to  him  to  be  in  harmony  with 
the  spirit  of  the  play,  rejecting  other  colours 
as  out  of  tune.  He  then  weaves  into  a 
pattern  certain  objects — an  arch,  a  foun- 
tain, a  balcony,  a  bed — using  the  chosen 
object  as  the  centre  of  his  design.  Then  he 
adds  to  this  all  the  objects  which  are  men- 
tioned in  the  play,  and  which  are  necessary 
to  be  seen.  To  these  he  adds,  one  by  one, 
each  character  which  appears  in  the  play, 
and  gradually  each  movement  of  each  char- 
acter, and  each  costume.  .  .  .  While  this 
pattern  for  the  eye  is  being  devised,  the 
designer  is  being  guided  as  much  by  the 
sound  of  the  verse  or  prose  as  by  the  sense 


A  NEW  ART  OF  THE  STAGE    363 

or  spirit.'     At  the  first  rehearsal  the  actors 
are  all  in  their  stage  dresses,  and  have  all 
learned  their  words.     The  picture  is  there  ; 
the  stage  director  then  lights  his  picture. 
He  then  sets  it  in  motion,  teaching  each 
actor  to  '  move  across  our  sight  in  a  certain 
way,  passing  to  a  certain  point,  in  a  certain 
light,  his  head  at  a  certain  angle,  his  eyes,  | 
his  feet,  his  whole  body  in  tune  with  the 
play.'     The  play  is  then  ready  to  begin,  we 
may  suppose?    By  no  means.     'There  will 
not  be  any  play,'  says  the  stage  director 
to  the  sheep-like   playgoer  who  has  been 
meekly  drifting  with  the  current  of  dialogue, 
*  there  will  not  be  any  play  in  the  sense  in 
which   you   use   the   word.     When,'    he   is 
told,  '  the  theatre  has  become  a  masterpiece 
of  mechanism,  when  it  has  invented  a  tech- 
nique, it  will  without  any  effort  develop  a 
creative  art  of  its  own.'     And  that  art  is  to 
be  created  out   of  three  things,  the  three 
bare  necessities  of  the  stage :  action,  scene 
and  voice.     By  action  is  meant  'both  ges- 
ture and  dancing,  the  prose  and  poetry  of 
action ' ;  by  scene,  '  all  which  comes  before 
the  eye,  such  as  the  lighting,  costume,  as 
well  as  the  scenery  ' ;  by  voice,  '  the  spoken 


364       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

word  or  the  word  which  is  sung,  in  contra- 
diction to  the  word  which  is  read ;  for  the 
word  written  to  be  spoken  and  the  word 
written  to  be  read  are  two  entirely  different 
things.' 

Up  to  this  last  surprising  point,  which, 
however,  has  been  stealthily  led  up  to  by  a 
very  persuasive  semblance  of  logic,  how 
admirable  is  every  definition  and  every 
suggestion !  Everything  that  is  said  is  as 
self-evidently  true  as  it  is  commonly  and 
consistently  neglected.  Who  will  deny  that 
the  theatre  is  a  visible  creation  of  life,  and 
that  life  is,  first  of  all,  action ;  to  the  spec- 
tator, in  the  stalls  or  in  the  street,  a  thing 
first  of  all  seen,  and  afterwards,  to  the 
measure  of  one's  care  or  capability,  heard 
and  understood  ?  That  life  should  be 
created  over  again  in  the  theatre,  not  in  a 
crude  material  copy,  but  in  the  sj^irit  of  all 
art,  *  by  means  of  things  that  do  not  possess 
life  until  the  artist  has  touched  them ' :  this 
also  will  hardly  be  denied.  This  visible 
creation  of  life  is  (until  the  words  come  into 
it)  like  a  picture,  and  it  is  made  in  the 
spirit  of  the  painter,  who  fails  equally  if  in 
his  picture  he  departs  from  life,  or  if  he  but 


A  NEW  ART  OF  THE  STAGE    365 

imitates  without  interpreting  it.  But  is  it 
not,  after  all,  through  its  power  of  adding 
the  life  of  speech  to  the  life  of  motion  that 
the  theatre  attains  its  full  perfection  ?  Can 
that  perfection  be  attained  by  limiting  its 
scope  to  what  must  remain  its  only  materials 
to  work  with  :  action,  scene  and  voice  ? 

The  question  is  this  :  whether  the  theatre 
is  the  invention  of  the  dramatist,  and  of  use 
only  in  so  far  as  it  interprets  his  creative 
work ;  or  whether  the  dramatist  is  the  in- 
vention of  the  theatre,  which  has  made  him 
for  its  own  ends,  and  will  be  able,  when  it 
has  wholly  achieved  its  mechanism,  to  dis- 
pense with  him  altogether,  except  perhaps 
as  a  kind  of  prompter.  And  the  crux  of 
the  question  is  this  :  that  to  the  supreme 
critic  of  literature,  to  Charles  Lamb,  a  play 
of  Shakespeare,  'Lear'  or  '  Hamlet,' seems 
too  great  for  the  stage,  so  that  when  acted 
it  loses  the  rarest  part  of  its  magic  ;  while 
to  the  ideal  stage- director,  to  Mr.  Gordon 
Craig,  *  Hamlet '  should  not  be  acted  because 
it  is  not  so  calculated  for  the  theatre  that 
it  depends  for  its  ultimate  achievement  on 
gesture,  scene,  costume,  and  all  that  the 
theatre  has  to  offer ;  not,  that  is,  that  it  is 


366       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

greater  or  less  in  its  art,  but  that  it  is  dif- 
ferent. If  we  are  content  to  believe  both, 
each  from  his  own  point  of  view,  is  it  not 
Craig  who  will  seem  the  more  logical  ?  for 
why,  it  will  be  asked,  should  the  greatest 
dramatist  of  the  world  have  produced  his 
greatest  work  under  an  illusion,  that  is  for 
acting  ?  Why  should  all  the  vital  drama  of 
the  world,  the  only  drama  that  is  vital  as 
literature,  have  been  thus  produced  ?  If 
all  this  has  indeed  been  produced  under  an 
illusion,  and  in  the  face  of  nature,  how  in- 
valuable must  such  an  illusion  be,  and  how 
careful  should  we  be  to  refrain  from  de- 
stroying any  of  its  power  over  the  mind  ! 

An  illusion  is  one  thing,  a  compromise  is 
another,  and  every  art  is  made  up  in  part  of 
more  and  more  ingenious  compromises.  The 
sculptor,  who  works  in  the  round,  and  in 
visible  competition  with  the  forms  of  life, 
has  to  allow  for  the  tricks  of  the  eye.  He 
tricks  the  eye  that  he  may  suggest,  beyond 
the  literal  contour,  the  movement  of  muscle 
and  the  actual  passage  of  blood  under  the 
skin,  the  momentary  creasing  of  flesh  ;  and 
he  balances  his  hollows  and  bosses  that  he 
may  suggest  the  play  of  air  about  living 


A   NEW  ART  OF  THE  STAGE    367 

flesh  :  all  his  compromises  are  with  fact,  to 
attain  Hfe.  May  not  the  art  of  the  drama- 
tist be  in  like  manner  a  compromise  with 
the  logic  of  his  mechanism,  a  deliberate  and 
praiseworthy  twisting  of  ends  into  means'? 
The  end  of  technique  is  not  in  itself,  but  in 
its  service  to  the  artist ;  and  the  technique, 
which  Mr.  Craig  would  end  with,  might, 
if  it  were  carried  out,  be  utilised  by  the 
dramatist  to  his  own  incalculable  advantage, 

1902,  1906. 


A  SYMBOLIST  FAECE 


2a 


A  SYMBOLIST  FAECE 

The  performance  of  '  Ubu  E,oi:  comedie  gui- 
gnolesque,'  by  M.  Alfred  Jarry,  at  the  Theatre 
de  rCEuvre,  if  of  little  importance  in  itself, 
is  of  considerable  importance  as  a  symptom 
of  tendencies  now  agitating  the  minds  of  the 
younger  generation  in  France.  The  play  is 
the  first  Symbolist  farce  ;  it  has  the  crudity 
of  a  schoolboy  or  a  savage ;  what  is,  after  all, 
most  remarkable  about  it  is  the  insolence 
with  which  a  young  writer  mocks  at  civilisa- 
tion itself,  sweeping  all  art,  along  with  all 
humanity,  into  the  same  inglorious  slop-pail. 
That  it  should  ever  have  been  written  is 
sufficiently  surprising ;  but  it  has  been 
praised  by  Catulle  Mend^s,  by  Anatole 
France ;  the  book  has  gone  through  several 
editions,  and  now  the  play  has  been 
mounted  by  Lugne-Poe  (whose  mainly 
Symbolist  Theatre  de  I'CEuvre  has  so  signi- 
ficantly  taken    the    place    of    the    mainly 

371 


372       STUDIES   IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

Naturalist  Thd^tre  Libre)  and  it  has  been 
given,  twice  over,  before  a  crowded  house, 
howling  but  dominated,  a  house  buffeted 
into  sheer  bewilderment  by  the  wooden  lath 
of  a  gross,  undiscriminating,  infantile  Philo- 
sopher-Pantaloon. 

M.  Jarry's  idea,  in  this  symbolical  buf- 
foonery, was  to  satirise  humanity  by  setting 
human  beings  to  play  the  part  of  marionettes, 
hiding  their  faces  behind  cardboard  masks, 
tuning  their  voices  to  the  howl  and  squeak 
which  tradition  has  considerately  assigned 
to  the  voices  of  that  wooden  world,  and 
mimicking  the  rigid  inflexibility  and  spas- 
modic life  of  puppets  by  a  hopping  and 
reeling  gait.  The  author,  who  has  written 
an  essay,  '  De  I'lnutilite  du  Theatre  au 
Theatre,'  has  explained  that  a  performance 
of  marionettes  can  only  suitably  be  accom- 
panied by  the  marionette  music  of  fairs  ; 
and  therefore  the  motions  of  these  puppet- 
people  were  accompanied,  from  time  to  time, 
by  an  orchestra  of  piano,  cymbals,  and 
drums,  played  behind  the  scenes,  and  repro- 
ducing the  note  of  just  such  a  band  as  one 
might  find  on  the  wooden  platform  outside 
a  canvas  booth  in  a  fair.    The  action  is  sup- 


A  SYMBOLIST  FARCE  373 

posed  to  take  place  *  in  Poland,  that  is  to 
say,  in  the  land  of  Nowhere ' ;  and  the 
scenery  was  painted  to  represent,  by  a 
child's  conventions,  indoors  and  out  of 
doors,  and  even  the  torrid,  temperate,  and 
arctic  zones  at  once.  Opposite  to  you,  at 
the  back  of  the  stage,  you  saw  apple-trees 
in  bloom,  under  a  blue  sky,  and  against  the 
sky  a  small  closed  window  and  a  fireplace, 
containing  an  alchemist's  crucible,  through 
the  very  midst  of  which  (with  what  refining 
intention,  who  knows  ?)  trooped  in  and  out 
these  clamorous  and  sanguinary  persons  of 
the  drama.  On  the  left  was  painted  a  bed, 
and  at  the  foot  of  the  bed  a  bare  tree,  and 
snow  falling.  On  the  right  were  palm-trees, 
about  one  of  which  coiled  a  boa-constrictor  ; 
a  door  opened  against  the  sky,  and  beside 
the  door  a  skeleton  dangled  from  a  gallows. 
Changes  of  scene  were  announced  by  the 
simple  Elizabethan  method  of  a  placard, 
roughly  scrawled  with  such  stage  directions 
as  this  :  '  La  sc^ne  represente  la  province  de 
Livonie  couverte  de  neige.'  A  venerable 
gentleman  in  evening-dress,  Father  Time 
as  we  see  him  on  Christmas-trees,  trotted 
across  the  stage  on  the  points  of  his  toes 


374       STUDIES  IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

between  every  scene,  and  hung  the  new 
placard  on  its  nail.  And  before  the  curtain 
rose,  in  what  was  after  all  but  a  local 
mockery  of  a  local  absurdity,  two  work- 
men backed  upon  the  stage  carrying  a  cane- 
bottomed  chair  and  a  little  wooden  table 
covered  with  a  sack,  and  M.  Jarry  (a  small, 
very  young  man,  with  a  hard,  clever  face) 
seated  himself  at  the  table  and  read  his  own 
'  conference  '  on  his  own  play. 

In  explaining  his  intentions,  M.  Jarry 
seemed  to  me  rather  to  be  explaining  the 
intentions  which  he  ought  to  have  had,  or 
which  he  had  singularly  failed  to  carry  out. 
To  be  a  sort  of  comic  antithesis  to  Maeter- 
linck, as  the  ancient  satiric  play  was  at  once 
a  pendant  and  an  antithesis  to  the  tragedy 
of  its  time :  that,  certainly,  though  he  did 
not  say  it,  might  be  taken  to  have  been  one 
of  the  legitimate  ambitions  of  the  writer  of 
'  Ubu  Roi.'  '  C'est  I'instauration  du  Guignol 
Litt^raire,'  as  he  affirms,  and  a  generation 
which  has  exhausted  every  intoxicant,  every 
soluble  preparation  of  the  artificial,  may 
well  seek  a  last  sensation  in  the  wire-pulled 
passions,  the  wooden  faces  of  marionettes, 
and,  by  a  further   illusion,  of  marionettes 


A  SYMBOLIST  FARCE  375 

who  are  living  people ;  living  people  pre- 
tending to  be  those  wooden  images  of  life 
which  pretend  to  be  living  people.  There 
one  sees,  truly,  the  excuse,  the  occasion,  for 
an  immense  satire,  a  Swiftian  or  Rabelaisian 
parody  of  the  world.  But  at  present  M. 
Jarry  has  not  the  intellectual  grasp  nor  the 
mastery  of  a  new  technique  needful  to 
carry  out  so  vast  a  programme.  Swift, 
Rabelais,  is  above  all  the  satirist  with  inten- 
tion, and  the  satirist  who  writes.  M.  Jarry 
has  somehow  forgotten  his  intention  before 
writing,  and  his  writing  when  he  takes  pen 
in  hand.  '  Ubu  Roi '  is  the  gesticulation  of 
a  young  savage  of  the  woods,  and  it  is  his 
manner  of  expressing  his  disapproval  of 
civilisation.  Satire  which  is  without  dis- 
tinctions becomes  obvious,  and  M.  Jarry  s 
present  conception  of  satire  is  very  much 
that  of  the  schoolboy  to  whom  a  practical 
joke  is  the  most  efficacious  form  of  humour, 
and  bad  words  scrawled  on  a  slate  the  most 
salient  kind  of  wit.  These  jerking  and  hop- 
ping, these  filthy,  fighting,  swearing  '  gamins ' 
of  wood  bring  us  back,  let  us  admit,  and 
may  legitimately  bring  us  back,  to  what  is 
primitively  animal  in  humanity.      Ubu  may 


376       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

be  indeed  *  un  sac  h,  vices,  un  outre  h  vins, 
une  poche  h,  bile,  un  empereur  remain  de  la 
decadence,  idoine  k  toutes  cacades,  pillard, 
paillard,  braillard,  un  goulaphre,'  as  the 
author  describes  him ;  but  he  is  not  suflfi- 
ciently  that,  he  is  not  invented  with  suffi- 
cient profundity,  nor  set  in  motion  with  a 
sufficiently  comic  invention.  He  does  not 
quite  attain  to  the  true  dignity  of  the 
marionette.  He  remains  a  monkey  on  a 
stick. 

Yet,  after  all,  Ubu  has  his  interest,  his 
value ;  and  that  strange  experiment  of  the 
Rue  Blanche  its  importance  as  a  step  in  the 
movement  of  minds.  For  it  shows  us  that 
the  artificial,  when  it  has  gone  the  full  circle, 
comes  back  to  the  primitive ;  des  Esseintes 
relapses  into  the  Red  Indian.  M.  Jarry  is 
logical,  with  that  frightful  irresistible  logic 
of  the  French.  In  our  search  for  sensation 
we  have  exhausted  sensation ;  and  now, 
before  a  people  who  have  perfected  the  fine 
shades  to  their  vanishing  point,  who  have 
subtilised  delicacy  of  perception  into  the 
annihilation  of  the  very  senses  through 
which  we  take  in  ecstasy,  a  literary  Sans- 
culotte has  shrieked  for  hours  that  unspeak- 


A  SYMBOLIST  FARCE  377 

able  word  of  the  gutter  which  was  the 
refrain,  the  '  Leitmotiv,'  of  this  comedy  of 
masks.  Just  as  the  seeker  after  pleasure 
whom  pleasure  has  exhausted,  so  the  seeker 
after  the  material  illusions  of  literary  arti- 
fice turns  finally  to  that  first,  subjugated, 
never  quite  exterminated,  element  of  cruelty 
which  is  one  of  the  links  which  bind  us  to 
the  earth.  *  Ubu  Ptoi '  is  the  brutality  out 
of  which  we  have  achieved  civilisation, 
and  those  painted,  massacring  puppets  the 
destroying  elements  which  are  as  old  as  the 
world,  and  which  we  can  never  chase  out  of 
the  system  of  natural  things. 

1888. 


PANTOMIME  AND  THE 
POETIC  DKAMA 


PANTOMIME  AND  THE  POETIC 
DRAMA 

It  might  be  contended  that  in  the  art  of  the 
theatre  an  absolute  criticism  can  admit 
nothing  between  pantomime  and  the  poetic 
drama.  In  these  two  extremes,  drama  in 
outline  and  drama  elaborated  to  the  final 
point,  the  appeal  is  to  the  primary  emotions, 
and  with  an  economy  and  luxuriance  of 
means,  each  of  which  is  in  its  own  way 
inimitable.  It  is  an  error  to  believe  that 
pantomime  is  merely  a  way  of  doing  without 
words,  that  it  is  merely  the  equivalent  of 
words.  Pantomime  is  thinking  overheard. 
It  begins  and  ends  before  words  have  formed 
themselves,  in  a  deeper  consciousness  than 
that  of  speech.  And  it  addresses  itself,  by 
the  artful  limitations  of  its  craft,  to  universal 
human  experience,  knowing  that  the  moment 
it  departs  from   those   broad   lines  it   will 

•81 


382       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN  ARTS 

become  unintelligible.  It  risks  existence  on 
its  own  perfection,  as  the  rope-dancer  does, 
to  whom  a  false  step  means  downfall.  And 
it  appeals,  perhaps  a  little  too  democratically, 
to  people  of  all  nations.  Becoming  aristo- 
cratic, getting  sheer  through  the  accidents 
of  life  without  staying  by  the  way  in  the 
manner  of  the  realistic  drama,  it  adds  the 
beauty  of  primary  emotions,  and  is  the  poetic 
drama.  Between  lie  the  non-essentials,  a 
kind  of  waste. 

All  drama,  until  one  comes  to  the  poetic 
drama,  is  an  imitation  of  life,  as  a  photograph 
is  an  imitation  of  life  ;  and  for  this  reason  it 
can  have,  at  the  best,  but  a  secondary  kind  of 
imaginative  existence,  the  appeal  of  the  mere 
copy.  To  the  poetic  drama  nature  no  longer 
exists ;  or  rather,  nature  becomes,  as  it  has 
been  truly  said  nature  should  become  to  the 
painter,  a  dictionary.  Here  is  choice,  selec- 
tion, combination  :  the  supreme  interference 
of  beauty.  Pantomime,  in  its  limited  way, 
is  again  no  mere  imitation  of  nature  :  it  is  a 
transposition,  as  an  etching  transposes  a 
picture.  It  observes  nature  in  order  that  it 
may  create  a  new  form  for  itself,  a  form 
which,    in    its    enigmatic    silence,    appeals 


PANTOMIME  AND  POETIC  DRAMA    383 

straight  to  the  intellect  for  its  comprehension, 
and,  like  ballet,  to  the  intellect  through  the 
eyes. 

And  pantomime  has  that  mystery  which 
is  one  of  the  requirements  of  true  art.  To 
watch  it  is  like  dreaming.  How  silently,  in 
dreams,  one  gathers  the  unheard  sound  of 
words  from  the  lips  that  do  but  make  pre- 
tence of  saying  them !  And  does  not  every  one 
know  that  terrifying  impossibility  of  speak- 
ing which  fastens  one  to  the  ground  for  the 
eternity  of  a  second,  in  what  is  the  new,  per- 
haps truer,  computation  of  time  in  dreams  ? 
Something  like  that  sense  of  suspense  seems 
to  hang  over  the  silent  actors  in  pantomime, 
giving  them  a  nervous  exaltation  which  has  its 
subtle,  immediate  effect  upon  us,  in  tragic  or 
comic  situation.  The  silence  becomes  an 
atmosphere,  and  with  a  very  curious  power  of 
giving  distinction  to  form  and  motion. 

I  do  not  see  why  people  should  ever  break 
silence  on  the  stage  except  to  speak  poetry. 
Here,  in  pantomime,  you  have  a  gracious, 
expressive  silence,  beauty  of  gesture,  a  per- 
fectly discreet  appeal  to  the  emotions,  a 
transposition  of  the  world  into  an  elegant, 
accepted  convention  :  in  a  word,  all  the  out- 


384       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN   ARTS 

lines  of  the  picture.  Poetry  comes,  not  only 
looking  beautiful,  not  only  excluding  what 
should  not  be  there,  but  saying  beautiful 
things,  the  only  things  worth  saying  when 
once  words  begin  to  be  used,  not  for  their 
mere  utility  (the  ordering  of  dinner,  a  bar- 
gain, the  arrangement  of  one's  affairs),  but  for 
their  beauty  in  a  form  of  art.  Here  is  the 
picture  completed,  awaiting  only,  for  its 
ideal  presentment,  the  interpretative  accom- 
paniment of  music,  which  Wagner  will  give 
it,  in  what  is  so  far  the  most  complete  form 
of  art  yet  realised. 

1898. 


THE  WORLD  AS  BALLET 


2b 


THE   WORLD   AS   BALLET 

The  abstract  thinker,  to  whom  the  question 
of  practical  morality  is  indifferent,  has  always 
loved  dancing,  as  naturally  as  the  moralist 
has  hated  it.  The  Puritan,  from  his  own 
point  of  view,  is  always  right,  though  it  suits 
us,  often  enough,  for  wider  reasons,  to  deny 
his  logic.  The  dance  is  life,  animal  life, 
having  its  own  way  passionately.  Part  of 
that  natural  madness  which  men  were  once 
wise  enough  to  include  in  religion,  it  began 
with  the  worship  of  the  disturbing  deities,  the 
gods  of  ecstasy,  for  whom  wantonness,  and 
wine,  and  all  things  in  which  energy  passes 
into  an  ideal  excess,  were  sacred.  It  was 
cast  out  of  religion  when  religion  cast  out 
nature :  for,  like  nature  itself,  it  is  a  thing 
of  evil  to  those  who  renounce  instincts. 
From  the  first  it  has  mimed  the  instincts. 
It  can  render  birth  and  death,  and  it  is  always 
going  over  and  over  the  eternal  pantomime 

387 


388       STUDIES   IN   SEVEN   ARTS 

of  love ;  it  can  be  all  the  passions,  and  all 
the  languors ;  but  it  idealises  these  mere 
acts,  gracious  or  brutal,  into  more  than  a 
picture ;  for  it  is  more  than  a  beautiful 
reflection,  it  has  in  it  life  itself,  as  it 
shadows  life ;  and  it  is  farther  from  life 
than  a  picture.  Humanity,  youth,  beauty, 
playing  the  part  of  itself,  and  consciously,  in 
a  travesty,  more  natural  than  nature,  more 
artificial  than  art :  but  we  lose  ourselves  in 
the  boundless  bewilderments  of  its  con- 
tradictions. 

The  dance,  then,  is  art  because  it  is 
doubly  nature :  and  if  nature,  as  we  are 
told,  is  sinful,  it  is  doubly  sinful.  A  waltz, 
in  a  drawing-room,  takes  us  suddenly  out 
of  all  that  convention,  away  from  those 
guardians  of  our  order  who  sit  around  the 
walls,  approvingly,  unconsciously ;  in  its 
winding  motion  it  raises  an  invisible  wall 
about  us,  shutting  us  off  from  the  whole 
world,  in  with  ourselves  ;  in  its  fatal  rhythm, 
never  either  beginning  or  ending,  slow, 
insinuating,  gathering  impetus  which  must 
be  held  back,  which  must  rise  into  the  blood, 
it  tells  us  that  life  flows  even  as  that,  so 
passionately  and  so  easily  and  so  inevitably ; 


THE  WORLD  AS  BALLET        389 

and  it  is  possession  and  abandonment,  the 
very  pattern  and  symbol  of  earthly  love. 
Here  is  nature  (to  be  renounced,  to  be  at 
least  restrained)  hurried  violently,  deliber- 
ately, to  boiling  point.  And  now  look  at 
the  dance,  on  the  stage,  a  mere  spectator. 
Here  are  all  these  young  bodies,  made  more 
alluring  by  an  artificial  heightening  of  whites 
and  reds  on  the  face,  displaying,  employing, 
all  their  natural  beauty,  themselves  full  of 
the  sense  of  joy  in  motion,  or  affecting  that 
enjoyment,  offered  to  our  eyes  like  a  bouquet 
of  flowers,  a  bouquet  of  living  flowers,  which 
have  all  the  glitter  of  artificial  ones.  As  they 
dance,  under  the  changing  lights,  so  human,  so 
remote,  so  desirable,  so  evasive,  coming  and 
going  to  the  sound  of  a  thin,  heady  music 
which  marks  the  rhythm  of  their  movements 
like  a  kind  of  clinging  drapery,  they  seem 
to  sum  up  in  themselves  the  appeal  of  every- 
thing in  the  world  that  is  passing,  and  col- 
oured, and  to  be  enjoyed ;  everything  that 
bids  us  take  no  thought  for  the  morrow,  and 
dissolve  the  will  into  slumber,  and  give  way 
luxuriously  to  the  delightful  present. 

How  fitly  then,  in  its  very  essence,  does 

the  art  of  dancing  symbolise  life ;  with  so 

2b2 


390       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

faithful  a  rendering  of  its  actual  instincts  ! 
And  to  the  abstract  thinker,  as  to  the  artist, 
all  this  really  primitive  feeling,  all  this 
acceptance  of  the  instincts  which  it  idealises, 
and  out  of  which  it  makes  its  own  beauty, 
is  precisely  what  gives  dancing  its  pre- 
eminence among  the  more  than  imitative 
arts.  The  artist,  it  is  indeed  true,  is  never 
quite  satisfied  with  his  statue  which  remains 
cold,  does  not  come  to  life.  In  every  art 
men  are  pressing  forward,  more  and  more 
eagerly,  farther  and  farther  beyond  the 
the  limits  of  their  art,  in  the  desire  to  do 
the  impossible  :  to  create  life.  Realising  all 
humanity  to  be  but  a  masque  of  shadows, 
and  this  solid  world  an  impromptu  stage  as 
temporary  as  they,  it  is  with  a  pathetic 
desire  of  some  last  illusion,  which  shall 
deceive  even  ourselves,  that  we  are  consumed 
with  this  hunger  to  create,  to  make  some- 
thing for  ourselves,  of  at  least  the  same 
shadowy  reality  as  that  about  us.  The  art 
of  the  ballet  awaits  us,  with  its  shadowy 
and  real  life,  its  power  of  letting  humanity 
drift  into  a  rhythm  so  much  of  its  own,  and 
with  ornament  so  much  more  generous  than 
its  wont. 


THE  WORLD   AS  BALLET        391 

And  something  in  the  particular  elegance 
of  the  dance,  the  scenery ;  the  avoidance  of 
emphasis,  the  evasive,  winding  turn  of 
things ;  and,  above  all,  the  intellectual  as 
well  as  sensuous  appeal  of  a  living  symbol, 
which  can  but  reach  the  brain  through  the 
eyes,  in  the  visual,  concrete,  imaginative 
way  ;  has  seemed  to  make  the  ballet  concen- 
trate in  itself  a  good  deal  of  the  modern 
ideal  in  matters  of  artistic  expression.  No- 
thing is  stated,  there  is  no  intrusion  of 
words  used  for  the  irrelevant  purpose  of 
describing ;  a  world  rises  before  one,  the 
picture  lasts  only  long  enough  to  have  been 
there  :  and  the  dancer,  with  her  gesture,  all 
pure  symbol,  evokes,  from  her  mere  beautiful 
motion,  idea,  sensation,  all  that  one  need 
ever  know  of  event.  There,  before  you,  she 
exists,  in  harmonious  life ;  and  her  rhythm 
reveals  to  you  the  soul  of  her  imagined 
being. 

1898. 


APPENDIX 

The  article  on  '  The  Decay  of  Craftsmanship  in 
England'  was  written  in  1903,  on  the  occasion  of 
the  seventh  exhibition  of  the  Arts  and  Crafts 
Exhibition  Society.  Since  then,  in  1906,  there 
has  been  another  exhibition,  and  here,  once  more, 
I  have  found  the  same  tortured  wood,  distorted 
copper,  fussily  modelled  plaster,  tawdry  gilding, 
childish  calligraphy ;  everywhere  the  gaudy,  the 
trivial,  or  the  eccentric ;  everywhere  an  unnatural 
curling  and  contortion  of  form,  without  strength 
of  line  or  '  hard  and  determinate  outline ' ;  every- 
where an  insecure  sense  of  construction,  an  uneasi- 
ness and  uncertainty  of  aim.  I  have  found  the 
desire  to  astonish  and  the  display  of  agility,  but 
no  reverence  for  wood,  or  metal,  or  stone,  or  any 
other  material,  none  of  the  fundamental  principles 
of  honest  design.  Yet  it  is  here,  if  anywhere,  that 
we  must  look  for  some  protest  '  against  purely 
commercial,  mechanical,  and  machine  production.' 

What  seems  to  be  made  evident  by  this  exhibi- 
tion is  that  there  is  at  present  in  England  no  in- 
stinctive feeling  for  decoration,  for  construction,  or 


394       STUDIES  IN  SEVEN  ARTS 

for  any  form  of  craftsmanship.  We  have  only  to 
go  into  an  old-furniture  shop  to  see  how  well 
English  workmen  could  once  make  chairs  and 
tables  and  cupboards,  things  which  they  can  no 
longer  make  well  unless  they  copy  them  from  old 
models.  We  have  only  to  cross  Europe  in  the 
Orient  Express,  and  as  we  get  nearer  and  nearer 
to  the  East,  to  look  out  of  the  carriage-windows  at 
every  little  station,  and  we  shall  see  the  peasants 
bringing  their  embroideries  for  sale,  native  indus- 
tries still  alive  and  effective.  What  the  Servian 
peasants  can  do,  we  with  our  Art  Schools  cannot 
do,  it  seems.  Just  as  we  have  no  architecture,  so 
we  have  no  craftsmanship.  Painting  is  cultivated 
as  an  art,  an  exotic  thing,  a  toy  for  rich  people ; 
but  the  arts  that  must  arise,  if  they  arise  at  all, 
out  of  the  need  of  beauty  in  daily  life,  the  arts  of 
architecture  and  of  handicraft,  have  either  died 
out  of  our  midst,  or  survive,  like  the  large  and 
small  trinkets  of  the  Arts  and  Crafts,  for  a  mockery 
and  a  warning. 


Printed  by  T.  and  A.  Constable,  Pniiteis  to  flis  Majesty 
at  the  Edinburgh  University  Piess 


BY  THE  SAME  WRITER. 

Poems  (Collected  Edition  in  two  Volumes).     1902. 

An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Browning.    1S86,  1906. 

Aubrey  Beardsley.    1898,  1905. 

The  Symbolist  Movement  in  Literature.    1899,  1907. 

Plays,  Acting,  and  Music.     1903,  1909. 

Cities.    1903. 

Studies  in  Prose  and  Verse.    1904. 

A  Book  of  Twenty  Songs.    1905. 

Spiritual  Adventures.     1905. 

The  Fool  of  the  World,  and  other  Poems.    1906. 

The  Romantic  Movement  in  English  Poetry.    1909. 


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